


The Alias 500 Ficlets

by Yahtzee



Category: Alias
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-14
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-07 16:54:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 70
Words: 37,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are ficlets I wrote for specific challenges in the Alias500 community on LiveJournal between 2005 and 2011, the ones I liked enough to archive. Written all throughout (and after) canon, so speculative and contradictory!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jack/Irina, final night

Tomorrow Laura Bristow will die. 

Tonight, Irina Derevko lies next to the man she has called husband for ten years; he's deeply asleep, unconscious in the heavy pull of jet lag from his latest mission. Two doors down, Sydney is dreaming of the Thanksgiving pageant and the role she might play. Her mother has tucked her in for the very last time. 

Irina slides one hand over her belly, trying to find consolation in the stowaway within. The baby might still prove to be Jack's – it's unlikely, but it's not impossible. She hopes against hope that it's Jack's baby she will take with her. Cruel though it seems to deprive Jack of a child, he will always have Sydney, and Irina knows she will need more comfort than Sloane's memory could ever provide. 

_I never meant to love you,_ she thinks, watching Jack breathe in and out. _I will learn not to love you._

It doesn't seem real – but, after a decade of calling herself Laura, Irina doesn't think "reality" is as clear-cut as she used to believe. 

How long will it be before Jack learns the truth? A day? A month? He will come to believe their marriage was all a lie – and so much of it is, but not all. Not everything. 

She ought to let him rest, but this is the last night of Laura's life. 

The first kiss is on his forehead, then his nose, then the hollow of his throat. Jack makes a questioning sound, half-aroused, half-protesting, as he struggles up from the depths of his dream. Irina kisses his mouth, brushing his lips with her tongue until he responds. He tastes of sleep, pleasantly familiar. 

When the kiss ends, she murmurs, "I need you." 

"I'm yours." Jack sounds groggy, but when Irina crawls atop him, he smiles against her shoulder, answering her touch. 

They make love in silence, in total darkness. Irina covers Jack's body with her own, controlling the pace, the depth, all of it; he's still drowsy, probably caught up in sensations that seem more like an erotic dream than reality. She wishes she could dream, too. 

Her climax is a weak, fluttering thing, more frustration than satisfaction – but how could she expect anything else, knowing what she knows? Irina takes more pleasure in feeling Jack shudder as he comes; at least she was able to give him this, one last time. 

_Remember tonight,_ she thinks as their bodies separate and Jack pulls her close as he eases into slumber. _Remember this, when they tell you our marriage wasn't real. Laura had no reason to make love to her husband tonight, but I did. I did._

Then she wonders which of them she wants to remember. 

"Love you," Jack says softly against her hair. He's already almost asleep again. 

"I love you too." Irina wonders if she'll ever say that again, to Jack or to anyone. 

After Jack drifts off, Irina goes down the hall and watches Sydney sleep.


	2. Lauren Reed in the afterlife

Spying is so much easier after you're dead. 

Lauren can keep an eye on Michael constantly, now. She watches him sleep. She fogs the mirror while he shaves. She accompanies him on stakeouts, silent, ever-watchful and forever awake – the perfect partner, though she doubts he'd agree. 

On those few nights when Sydney's spirit is willing and Michael's flesh isn't weak, Lauren watches them have sex. Is it her imagination, or is he investing a little less – energy – in his lovemaking? She doesn't think she's imagining it. Lauren isn't so naïve as to think that her husband actually loved her more than he loves Sydney, but she thinks he's no longer a man capable of the same kind of love. Sydney may forever be the love of Michael's life, but Lauren knows she's the last one who had Michael's heart, when it was whole. 

Only scraps are left behind now, and Sydney is welcome to those. 

Some days are more interesting than others, in her haunting. She actually feels pain when she sees Julian caged in his tiny cell; Lauren had thought all her emotions were left behind with her body, but perhaps not. When Julian and Michael visit that body together, those emotions resurface, shaking her so much Lauren fears she'll become something mortals can sense – white vapor, a cold space, a trembling in the air. 

Does Julian know his love for her is a postmortem invention, a justification of his hatred for Michael? Lauren doesn't mind that; she finds it flattering, really, but she hopes he knows. Michael's guilt is even more gratifying. But the hour's pleasures are diminished by the sight of her corpse, a thing now, separate from her spirit, alien and repugnant. 

Lauren wonders what they'd do if she climbed inside her former body, sat up and yelled, "Boo!" She can't, which is really too bad. 

Michael is more distant from the others, so they flicker at the edges of her consciousness: Weiss, Marshall, Jack. Nadia intrigues Lauren – the desire to know The Passenger even survives death – but Michael spends little time with her, the fool. Of all of them, only Dixon sometimes makes Lauren nostalgic; he was the only one she actually liked, the one who truly gave her a chance. Of course, that was Dixon's mistake, but she thinks of him no less kindly for that. 

No, it's Sydney she glimpses most often through Michael's shadowed eyes. Sydney obviously sees that Michael is slipping away, moment by moment, but her own fear and pain stop her from reaching out, pulling him back. Lauren watches Sydney's pain and feasts on it. 

Sydney's photograph was on Michael's wall the first time Lauren came to his apartment. On their wedding day, she kept hearing Sydney's name whispered at the reception. Even before Sydney returned from the "dead," she was always there. 

_This is what it's like,_ Lauren thinks, as Sydney lies awake next to Vaughn, _having a man who's haunted._

_Enjoy it as much as I did._


	3. Katya pretends to be Irina

They pretended to be one another often enough. As girls, they tried to place blame for a broken lamp or mud tracked on the floor. When they became teenagers, sometimes one of them would – as a costly favor – pretend to be the other for the purposes of deceiving an undesirable blind date. But, in their various ways, these were all just games. 

Later the pretense became more serious. 

Irina pretended to be Katya when she left the United States in 1981. It was just a name she gave as she drove cross-country, California to Virginia, where the KGB extracted her for once and for all. Sometimes, at night over vodkas, they'd laugh about the many bar tabs "Katya" had left unpaid across America. Nobody knew, back then, not to drink during pregnancy. 

Later, Irina used Katya's papers to board the plane in New Delhi after her escape from Kashmir. One Katya Derevko met the other in Tokyo, and the true one was shattered by her sister's thinness and misery. Neither of them cried in the airport or the cab, not until they were in a well-guarded hotel room. Irina had huddled on her side, clutching one of the pillows in front of her like a pregnant belly, or a baby, as she told of the past year of her life. Katya had been unable to give her any comfort; for some things, there is no comfort. 

Katya pretended to be Irina when she first needed to broker an arms deal in South Africa. They didn't know her there yet, but Irina's reach extended that far. By the time the sellers were any wiser, Katya had the missiles, and they weren't in a position to ask any more questions. 

And now, she is pretending again, as she types the words, "Miss you."

After a moment, Jack answers, "MISS YOU TOO." 

She closes the laptop, moved by this small evidence that perhaps Irina's lost husband loved her back. But Jack Bristow's emotions are no longer important, not unless they can be manipulated for her use. 

Irina has no name left – not Katya's, not her own. She lies dead in a freezer, denied even the comfort of a grave until Katya can find Irina's murderer. 

Jack isn't on Katya's list of suspects; he was in prison when Irina died, a fairly airtight alibi. But he must believe that he is working with Irina, _for_ her, in order to bring Katya closer to her goal. Otherwise, he'll run after his own vengeance, and the death of Irina's murderer is a satisfaction Katya demands for herself. 

She plans on comforting him for the loss he doesn't yet know, playing her sister's role in ways Jack couldn't even guess yet. But that comes later. 

For now, Katya will wear Irina's mask until she finds the main suspect, an assassin whose death will satisfy Katya and return Irina's name to her, at last, upon the grave she deserves. 

Katya will be Irina – until she finds Julia Thorne.


	4. Jack gets a postcard

_The Doge's Palace._

Jack studies the black-and-white courtyard and the high golden tower for a few seconds, far longer than he spends glancing at the scribbled greeting ( _"weather's gorgeous – canals dirtier than I thought – see ya, Nicholas"_ ) on the back. The writing is meaningless; the picture is the message. 

According to the code they worked out beforehand, Venice means that Sydney and Vaughn are safe. They got away clean. Jack thought they had – he covered their tracks as well as he could, which is extremely well – but given the nature of the people pursuing them, he's glad for the confirmation. 

A month later, another postcard arrives. 

_Machu Picchu. ("just amazing here – headed for a hostel in Rio – love, Janet")_

Mossy stone steps beneath a clear blue sky. His daughter and her lover – perhaps her husband, by now, at least under the new names they'll use for the rest of their lives – have found a place to call home. There is no message in the code to tell him where that home might be; Jack will never know. 

If Sloane or Sark ever realizes that Sydney and Vaughn are still alive – that Jack helped them get away – it's better that Jack shouldn't know. That way, he can't be made to tell them. 

His daughter's safety is worth not knowing. It's even worth never seeing her again. That's the deal Jack made (though who is he bargaining with? Fate? Himself?), and he'll see it through. 

Through the next few months, the postcards arrive from Melbourne, Montreal and Madrid. "M" cities mean safety and silence: no news is good news. Every card is a relief to him, but each is followed by a certain emptiness. 

Jack exiled himself from his daughter's life before, but never absolutely – he could always see her happiness or her struggles, even from afar. Half his memories of her are of glimpses stolen through car windows. Stupidity, and he's cursed himself for it more times than he could ever count – but he'd trade almost anything for even one more look. 

This is why he can't know where she is. Jack's love could betray her location just as surely as anyone else's hate. 

_Beijing ("Forbidden City – can't believe the video camera's broken – Pauline")_

Beijing means news: something important, something not in their code. Jack will have to extrapolate from the next postcard. It could be encoded in the message, or symbolic from the city chosen, or – it could be anything. 

The next two weeks stretch out, torturous and slow. Jack wonders if Sydney and Vaughn will ask him to come to them – if things are that desperate – and this fills him with both hope and dread.

When the postcard arrives, it's from Bethlehem. The scrolling banner at the bottom says, in old-fashioned type, "Unto Us A Child Is Born." 

Jack holds the card as reverently as he would the grandchild he will never hold, will never even see. He glimpses Sydney's joy from a distance, as always, and it's enough.


	5. Alice's POV

It's something to do with funerals. Maybe people become desperate to prove that they're still alive; maybe they're eager for psychological escape. You've always suspected that, on a subconscious level, the presence of death awakens the need to create life. 

At any rate, you're not the only person who's had irresponsible sex after a funeral. But knowing that it's a natural response doesn't make it all that much easier to face. Your father hadn't been in the ground 10 hours before you were back in Michael's house, in his arms, in his bed. You're not ashamed, but it's a difficult thing to explain.

Fortunately, at breakfast, Michael doesn't need any explanations. "I've missed you, Alice," he says, making you the peanut-butter waffles you love. The edges are ragged; he's out of practice. "I miss the life we had together. I know I didn't make it easy for us, but I'd like to try again."

You weren't planning on trying again. You came to Michael for comfort, which he provided, and to escape the ragged sound of your mother's crying. But it feels nice, being with him this morning. Natural. "I'd like that," you say, and for the first few weeks, it really seems as though it will be that simple. 

But someone else is nearby. 

Michael buys the kind of books he never read before: older novels from the Jazz Age and the 19th century, the stuff he used to call "books by dead people." That's rather academic for him, though on its own, you wouldn't pay much attention to it. But he's gone even more for work than he used to be – and you thought it was IMPOSSIBLE for someone to be gone more than Michael was – and he makes fewer apologies. 

Gone for "work," you start thinking, putting quotes around the word in your mind. 

(It's not that he's cheating – Michael wouldn't ever cheat, would he? – but there's someplace else he'd rather be.) 

Michael used to understand that you weren't a hockey fan; it was a shared joke between you, the trade-off – he'd go to the rink alone, and you'd go to the ballet alone, and you both came back happier for the time apart. But now he finds it annoying that you won't go to the Kings games with him. Once he happily lit candles whenever a thunderstorm made you nervous about the power; now he asks you if you're afraid of the dark, and there's scorn in his voice. What were quirks of your personality have somehow become flaws while you weren't looking.

Bit by bit, these flaws begin to piece themselves together; seen in relief, they form a portrait. There's this woman who's brave and smart – or, more to the point, braver and smarter than you. She's everything Michael wants. She's real, not a fantasy. And she's someone he can't have.

You went back to Michael as a distraction from pain. It never occurred to you that he might be doing the exact same thing.


	6. Talk between Jack and Vaughn while Jack believes he's dying

Jack sits uncomfortably in the front seat of Vaughn's jeep, looking seasick and exhausted, as a silo in the desert looms ever larger on the horizon. Vaughn's doing the driving. 

"Okay," Vaughn says, "I'm guessing we didn't come out here to collect grain." 

"My daughter was always attracted to intelligent men," Jack replies. Vaughn decides to let the sarcasm pass unmentioned because the man is sick, though of course Jack would have said that no matter what. "There's no external security. Park wherever you like." 

Vaughn hops out of the jeep, squinting through his sunglasses at the concrete silo. After a few seconds, he realizes that Jack hasn't followed him; a glance over his shoulder reveals that the jeep's door is open, but Jack's just sitting there, not moving. Maybe he doesn't feel strong enough to get out and walk. 

That realization makes Vaughn feel like the earth just shifted on its orbit. Jack Bristow has never been his favorite person, but there is something fundamentally wrong with a world where Sydney's father isn't strong enough to take care of himself.

For a few terrible seconds, Vaughn wonders if he's going to have to help him, and whether Jack would ever forgive Vaughn just for asking. But then Jack steps out, slow but steady. 

"Inside," he orders. Maybe Jack's body is giving out, but his voice still has its snap. "We don't have much time." 

The silo turns out to be a sat ops installation, capable of being up and running within five minutes – as Jack demonstrates. Vaughn runs one hand over a control panel; the equipment is even newer and better than what they have at APO. "How often do you use this?" 

"Seldom. I simply use APO equipment, when possible. But – if you ever need to obtain satellite footage without Arvin Sloane knowing – this is the place." 

That wasn't the general "you," Vaughn suspects. The suspicions become definite when Jack drops keys in his hand. "Jack –"

"You already know where one of my storehouses is." Jack walks to the center of the floor; he does a good job of disguising the limp, but it's still there. "I'll turn over a list of the other locations when – when the time is right. You'll get some account numbers, too." 

"What do you want me to do with this?" 

"I cannot protect my daughter any longer." It is Jack's ultimate surrender; Vaughn realizes that he no longer expects to live. Nothing but death could make Jack say this. His eyes meet Vaughn's, spearing him fast. "From now on, it's up to you. And you'll need all the help you can get." 

Sarcasm again – but Vaughn knows what to say. "I'll take care of Sydney. Always."

Jack studies him through shadowed eyes. Still he doesn't see Vaughn as an equal – Vaughn knows this – but he's handing the torch over without fear. Only with regret. 

"Always," Vaughn repeats. 

"I know." Another man might shake Vaughn's hand. Jack starts explaining the security system.


	7. Dixon has a self-imposed deadline

Dixon only has ten days left when he makes up his mind. 

If he doesn't act soon – no, he doesn't want to think about it. He'll do what he has to do. After all, it hasn't been that long; Dixon thinks he remembers how. 

But the days wind on, and he keeps coming up with excuses: it's not the most professional decision he's ever made, and where the hell would they go? The excuses begin to look like reasons, and he almost puts it out of mind. 

Then, on the day itself – when Dixon has all but forgotten his self-imposed deadline -- reality comes knocking. 

"Stephen, you smell like air freshener." Robin waves her hand in front of her nose, exaggerating so that her bangle bracelets click against each other. "BAD air freshener." 

Her brother leans out of the bathroom, reeking of the cheap cologne he bought his father as a birthday gift. "At least I don't smell like the dog." 

"No insults!" Dixon calls out. The kids obey without acknowledging him. But they're still determined to annoy one another. 

"Where are you going with Patrice, anyway?" Robin folds her arms. "Anywhere her mom drives you, I guess." 

"You think you're so hot just because Jason can drive. Dad's still gonna make you get home by 10:30." 

"Actually, I was going to ask for 11 –" She gives Dixon her prettiest doe-eyed smile, which would be more effective if Jason Carter weren't 17 and a star basketball player. 

"10:30. Sorry, honey, but that's final." Dixon turns back to his paper, mostly so he won't see the faces Robin and Stephen make at each other and thereby be required to scold the kids. 

Within an hour, not one but BOTH of his children will be out on dates. And where will Marcus Dixon be? 

Dixon will be watching TV.

Resolutely, Dixon puts the newspaper to one side and goes to his room. The number is one he memorized months ago, never certain if he would use it or not. He meant to call ten days ago, but – the last day isn't too late, right? 

Hayden Chase has caller ID. "Marcus. What can I do for you?"

"It's, ah, actually not a business call." Smooth. Very smooth.

But he can hear the smile in Hayden's honeyed voice when she replies, "You mean APO hasn't come apart at the seams yet? At this rate, I'm going to win the Langley pool."

"Where did you lay your money?" 

"No full-on personnel meltdowns until at least August. I bet five dollars, too, so I'm counting on you." 

The jokes turn into chatting, and the chatting goes well, and it turns out to be easy when, for the first time in decades, Dixon asks a woman for a date. Turns out Hayden loves Mexican food, and next Friday night will be just fine. 

Just after he hangs up the phone, Dixon hears Jason's car in the driveway. He beat the deadline in the nick of time.


	8. For Everything Else, There's Marshall

The woman behind the counter at Macy's is getting impatient; these are the fourteenth and fifteenth perfumes they've sampled. "Coco is a more traditional scent, but Coco Mademoiselle is lighter and fresher." 

Marshall sniffs the paper strips again, then shakes his head. You can tell anything from paper. "Try it on my skin." 

"These scents have extraordinary staying power, sir –"

"I don't care." He tugs back his cuffs and smiles gamely. "Hit me."

That night, when he goes home, Carrie takes one whiff, gives Marshall an accusing look and is noticeably distant all evening.

_One bottle, Coco Mademoiselle Eau de Cologne: $55._

Hemlines are all over the damn place; the one constant seems to be asymmetry. Lots of transluscent layers, too, though Marshall can't see investing too heavily in anything that might snag, rip or tear. He tries to re-sell as much of this stuff as possible. Sometimes he thinks he's the only one at APO who cares much about the fact that this is all taxpayer money. 

Hmm – looks like rounded-toe pumps are all the rage –

"Marshall!" 

He sits up straight so quickly that his office chair vibrates, like a cartoon. Sloane is glaring at him from the doorway. "Sorry, Mr. Sloane, sir. Just, ah –"

"Reading a magazine," Sloane finishes dryly. 

"Just, ah – background reading." Marshall's gaze drifts downward with Sloane's, to the grinning supermodel on the cover. "Just – catching up." 

"Perhaps we could turn our attention to the firewall now." 

Marshall tries not to let his relief show too much. "Perhaps we should."

 _One year's subscription to_ W _magazine, $16.95._

The women at the manicure salon are all immigrants from Southeast Asia, but they've all adopted Americanized names from a book that must be 50 years old. Esther, Millicent and Gladys aren't more than 20 years old each, and they act as though life holds no greater pleasure than showing Marshall the latest colors from OPI.

"Oooh, this one's pretty, huh?" Marshall lifts up a bottle of something vividly pink. "All sparkly there." 

"Very Pink Pagoda," says Esther, tapping her own unpolished nail against the glass. 

"Is that the name? That's kinda cute." Too cute? No, that's probably just about right. Kinda flirty. 

"You want spa manicure or regular manicure?" Millicent says. 

"Oh, no. Not for me." Marshall holds up the bottle. "Just the polish, thanks." 

_One bottle, OPI nail polish in Very Pink Pagoda: $7._

On the surveillance feed, Marshall watches as Sydney – dressed in a skirt with an asymmetrical hem, with Very Pink fingernails and the scent of Coco Mademoiselle – walks up to the security guard. She's meant to be a pretty American tourist, a little out of her depth in such a swanky club, just the kind of girl who could use some guidance. 

The guard, completely deceived, smiles and begins walking Sydney to the back entrance – where the cameras will no longer record him, or the moment he falls to the ground unconscious. 

_Knowing you've put Sydney in the perfect disguise: Priceless._


	9. Jack and Arvin's secret pact

"You sure you're okay?" 

"I'm okay. I'm just – I don't know if I'm ready for a second baby just yet. Your work is so hectic –" 

"Yet?" Marshall brightened. "You mean – you do want a second baby?" 

Carrie touched his shoulder. "Yeah. You didn't know that?"

"Mitchell was an accident –"

"But a great accident. The best." 

"Maybe there's something to be said for accidents." Marshall waited for Carrie's answer, and he got it when she took his hand. 

 

**

 

"I just don't see how –" 

"You have two children, Marcus." Hayden Chase raised an eyebrow. "I think you know where they come from." 

"Trust me, I remember." The wild night Dixon had spent with Chase in her penthouse wasn't something he would ever have forgotten – even without this.

Chase studied him carefully. "What do you want? I'd like to know." 

Dixon remembered holding his kids in his hands when they were first born. "I want to have this child with you." 

Chase didn't respond right away, and spoke softly when she did. "After I turned 40, I just thought – Well, that's that. Didn't happen. No point in regrets." 

"And now –"

"Now I think we have a lot to discuss." It wasn't the most romantic turn of phrase, but that was how Dixon knew he was about to become a father of three.

 

**

 

"Hello? Condoms? On the whole time. Every time." Weiss paced back and forth in the kitchen. 

"I know! I was there!" Nadia raked her fingers through her hair. "But even condoms fail." 

"Oh, man. I'm gonna sit down, okay? Sitting down is good." 

_Well,_ Nadia thought, _he seems shocked, but not unhappy. That's got to be a positive sign._

For herself, she had been committed to the child within her from the moment she first discovered her pregnancy; youth spent in an orphanage had instilled in her a powerful desire for family. Now that she was in a stable home, with friends and family and a good man in her life – yes, this was time. But did Eric agree?

Apparently so, because the next words out of his mouth were, "My mom can deal with the shiksa factor, but we've got to have an interfaith wedding. Okay?" 

Nadia laughed. "Okay." 

 

**

 

"Unexpected – yeah. But not unwelcome." Vaughn covered Sydney's belly with his hand, and she smiled up at him. 

"It doesn't even feel that unexpected." In her heart, Sydney had known this day would come since the beginning. "We shouldn't tell anyone yet. Give it a few months." 

"Right." Vaughn sighed. "God, when we tell your dad –" 

 

**

 

"Yes, others will be affected besides Sydney and Nadia." Sloane folded his hands. "But we accepted some – collateral incidents – when we made our pact."

"And I intend to honor it. But if this goes on much longer –" 

"Both our daughters. That was the agreement." 

Jack left with the secret file about the fertility drugs in APO's water, resolving to destroy every page. Sydney could never know about Project Grandchild.


	10. Nadia thinks about Jacquelyn

Nadia has two sisters after all. 

From the day Sydney found her, Nadia has known that she was her mother's second daughter. Sydney remembers fingerpainting and piano lessons, an embrace, a smile. Nadia has none of that. Envy has swirled around her, acidic and vile, but she has worked to cast that envy aside. It's not Sydney's fault that their mother didn't raise Nadia; for that matter, it's not their dead mother's fault, either. If Irina Derevko loved Sydney more – of course she did. How could it be any other way? 

Yet Nadia always thought her father was hers and hers alone. That has frightened her at times (she will never forget him in the shadow of the Mueller device, blood beaded on his skin like raindrops), but his love has comforted her too. 

Now she will have to share him with Jacquelyn. She doesn't want to. 

Small and churlish of her, to begrudge her father's love for an infant's ghost. And yet Nadia does, and she despises herself for it. She would never have guessed that she could feel such pity for her father and at the same time nurse a vibrant jealousy toward the child he lost. 

Nadia is the daughter of Irina Derevko, a traitor and murderer. During Jack's illness, they learned that Derevko never even liked Arvin Sloane; he pretends that didn't hurt, but Nadia feels sure she knows how to read what she saw in his face. Jacquelyn was the daughter of Emily, a good and loving woman. Everyone's voice softens when they speak of Emily: Jack, who knew her; Sydney, who adored her; even Dixon, who killed her. 

_I am a substitute,_ Nadia thinks. _When my father learned about me, he thought that Rambaldi repaid a debt. I was the balance due._

After driving her father home, Nadia returns to the apartment and is surprised to find Sydney there; she would have thought her sister would be with Jack on one of his first evenings back from the hospital. Instead, she is curled on the sofa with a glass of wine. 

"How is your dad?" Nadia expects to hear good news.

Sydney just shrugs, lost in thought. She doesn't ask after Sloane. But she still moves her feet to the side, welcoming Nadia to the sofa – welcoming her home.

Nadia sits up late that night. She sketches a family tree on the back of an envelope – Irina Derevko is the root, because she has to be, but so many others belong here too. Slim trees on either side stand for Aunt Katya (the beloved) and Aunt Elena (the unknown.) Jack goes next to Sydney; he does not share Nadia's blood, but she can't leave him out. 

She sketches her own name on a leaf, dangling from a branch as though it might blow away. Then she creates a branch for Emily, another leaf for Jacquelyn. Nadia still resents her lost sister, but she can at least give Jacquelyn this: a promise that she belongs.


	11. In a shocking twist, Jack decides to keep a secret

"We should tell her together," Irina whispers against Jack's shoulder. He embraces her tightly, unable to respond in any other way to her revelation. 

"Together." Jack kisses her deeply. All their crimes against one another are meaningless now, dwarfed by one simple fact: He is Nadia's father. Irina is the mother of his children. 

(Later, there will be questions – Why didn't Irina tell him before? Why didn't he investigate further? – but even then, they won't matter, not really.) 

"Jack!" Vaughn's voice rings through the comm. "We've found Sloane –"

Irina stiffens in Jack's arms. 

"— he's the one who deactivated the security grid. It was him all along –"

Sloane was deceiving Elena. Even at the moment of Rambaldi's ultimate triumph, Sloane was able to keep his resolution, to stand by their side. 

For Nadia.

"Stay with him," Jack says. "I'll be right there." 

After he shuts down the link, Irina studies him, uncertain. "Should I go with you?" 

"You tell me." 

A thousand possibilities pass between them, wordless. But she says, "I don't need to see Sloane." 

Jack wishes he'd needed that reassurance less. "Soon," he says, promising everything that word can hold. They kiss again before he turns to go.

**

When he gets to the warehouse, dozens of sights pull at Jack's attention: the cut on Sydney's forehead, the giant iron cradle of the Mueller device, and Arvin Sloane sitting amid the wreckage, cradling his own broken arm in his lap. But Jack can look only at Nadia.

She runs toward them from the opposite side of the building, soot-smudged and breathless. Nadia is the same girl Jack parted from hours ago, and it is precisely this that humbles him. He'd have liked to think that he would know, just _know_ , though he is too old for such sentimentality. Does he love her instantly? Jack realizes he doesn't, but he is aware of a strange warmth and vulnerability, the hollowed-out place inside himself that his younger daughter will soon fill. Irina's revelation has made his heart ready; it will be up Jack and Nadia to do the rest. 

_I'm your father._ He thinks the words to her as she hurries forward – but Nadia is running to Sloane. 

"Dad – oh, Dad –" Nadia kneels by Sloane's chair, her eyes welling with tears. "I didn't believe in you. I thought –"

"Shh, sweetheart. It's all right." Sloane uses his uninjured hand to brush dark strands of hair back from Nadia's upturned face. "You never have to apologize to me." 

"I love you," she says, clutching at his jacket. "I love you so much." 

Sloane smiles down at her. They belong to one another. 

"Dad?" Sydney comes to Jack's side. "Where's Mom?" 

"She's fine. How's your head?" 

"This? Nothing," she says, though she winces as she says it. "Dad, you look – is there something you need to tell me?" 

Nadia is only a few feet away, sheltered by her father's love. 

"No," Jack says. "It's all right. Everything's all right."


	12. Arvin and Jack have a suspiciously honest conversation

"You never told me."

"No." Sloane studies Jack's face, wondering if – for the first time in years – they are truly speaking as friends. He thinks they are. "It was difficult to speak about. Best left unsaid. You understand the need for silence, I know." 

"It was while I was in prison. Otherwise, I would have known." 

"Emily and I – there had been early miscarriages before. False hopes. She didn't want us to tell anyone until she was three months along. You were taken into custody just two weeks before that. By the time you were released, we had lost Jacquelyn."

He can say the name at last. How did he ever go twenty-five years without saying his daughter's name? The silence was a gift to Emily, in the beginning; it became a prison cell slowly, over time, so that he didn't even know until now. 

Jack has broken the walls down. 

"Before you ask the next question," Sloane says, "yes, we were naming her after you." 

Jack acknowledges this with a nod. The lights in this underground office are harsh; perhaps that's one reason Jack looks so much older. But they are older – not actually old yet, not for another decade, but already companions in winter. 

"That's why you were always so – taken – with Sydney." Jack speaks gently. It's been too long since Sloane heard the voice of the friend he lost so long ago. "She represented the child you'd lost." 

"A father's weakness. If you can forgive nothing else I've done, at least you can understand that, can't you?" 

"That much I can forgive." 

When Jack says it, Sloane feels a weight lift from him. His friend is difficult to wound, but once wounded, almost never heals; to see even one of the rifts between them mended is more than Sloane had ever hoped, more than he deserves. 

Although they have so much to say, they remain in silence for a while, almost companionably. Questions bubble up in Sloane's mind – about this office, about Jack's mind games, about the strange man who claims to be him – but he's too tired to attack them. Better to sit here, to rest, to be with his best friend. 

"I missed you," Sloane says. "Talking with you." 

The next admission comes easily from Jack. Too easily. "I've missed this also. I always will." 

"Don't say that. We've – rounded a corner, you and I. We'll talk like this again. Can't you tell?" 

Jack studies him, an expression more pitying than fond. "I needed answers. I needed to know what you would say. That's all." 

So like Jack, to take advantage of his weakness. Sloane expects that of him; he smiles at his friend's foibles. "You always think you can close the door between us, Jack. But you never can. You never will." 

"No," Jack says, putting the syringe to Sloane's arm; the needle prick stings. "It's time for you to sleep, Ned."

As darkness falls, Sloane wonders why that name sounds so familiar.


	13. Fauxrina's final thoughts

In the third week of her life as Irina Derevko, she's finally comfortable. The extra three inches of height, the different curves and muscles – it takes some getting used to. Tonight, as she walks into the British Embassy, she no longer feel any pain, not even any awkwardness. Instead, a kind of giddiness envelops her. It's as though she were a little girl, playing dress-up –

\-- until the usher hands her a card. She recognizes the handwriting at once, the sharp slant of the pen like a blow to her chest. _Jack Bristow._

Tonight she will die. 

She's ready, she tells herself as she walks toward the Embassy's courtyard pool. Once this is done, Rambaldi's prophecies can unfold. She's lived for this for decades; she can die for it too. Can't she? 

Bristow is both older and more handsome than the photos in his background file. He smiles at her from behind his glass of champagne, but the strain in his eyes is obvious. The real Irina Derevko would know the truth; she would fight, or flee, or explain. 

She can only make small talk about the party, and accept her killer's invitation to dance. 

The music floating up from the Embassy ball is very quiet, but they keep time, falling into rhythm almost instantly. Good. That's something he'd expect from his wife, something she can use. 

He tells her that she broke his heart. How is she supposed to respond? She recalls a security tape of Irina in Kashmir, flirting with Gerard Cuvee – the same toss of the hair, the same open-mouthed laugh. She promises that she won't do it again, and Bristow's voice almost breaks on his next words: "Good to know." 

This murder troubles him – too much. More than Elena said it would. Time to improvise. 

She kisses him lightly; his body tenses in her arms. They kiss again, and unbidden, desire wells up in her – not for her murderer, but for the sense of wanting, burning, feeling alive. Her fingertips brace his head so that she can keep kissing him, deeper and deeper. When Bristow responds, she wonders in a daze whether Bristow will lose his resolve and end up taking her right here by the pool. The thought dizzies her –

She must not hope. She must not want to live. This has to end. 

Pulling away from the kiss, she tries to leave; as she anticipated, this awakens Bristow's anger. When he levels the gun at her, she is both frightened and satisfied. 

_Why?_ Bristow wants to know. He could still fail – still let her go. He must not. 

She thinks of all Rambaldi has written, all the wonders that will be. Her answer isn't for Bristow's question, but for the one lurking even now inside her own heart: "Because it had to be done." 

"Damn you," Bristow says, like a man who believes in hell, and who expects to follow her there. 

There is no pain, only falling. Her last movement is a smile.


	14. Irina becomes an author

Jack had not attempted to guess what Irina might do next. He found that, as a rule, it was best not to make predictions about the unpredictable; that way, he remained on his guard. All the same, when she finally contacted him, he was utterly unprepared for what she had to say. 

Slowly, he repeated, "You've written your memoirs." 

" _The Moscow Letters: A True Story of Espionage._ Under a pseudonym, of course." Irina looked well-satisfied as they walked through the streets of Barcelona. "The CIA will know who the author is, but they can't confront my publisher without acknowledging that the story's true – and they won't." 

"I'm surprised the publisher believes the story's true." Jack sometimes didn't believe it himself, and he'd been there. 

She shrugged; her hair ruffled in the spring breeze, and it struck him that he hadn't seen her so relaxed and carefree in decades. "I had to leave out almost everything pertaining to Rambaldi and the prophecies. But I supplied certain corroborative details. They have quite high expectations for it. There's even talk of a movie deal." Irina raised one eyebrow. 

"Like James Bond." Jack shook his head, now equally as entertained as surprised. "A spy adventure." 

"A love story," Irina corrected him. He considered correcting her in return, but instead he offered her his arm. She took it, and they walked along together. 

Jack wondered just what truths were in that book, and how many of them were intended not for the reading public, but for him. Some of what Irina had to say about their early courtship and marriage would undoubtedly be painful to hear, and embarrassing to have exposed to the whole world. But if this was how Irina had chosen to tell the full truth, Jack decided, he was willing to hear it, at last. 

"You'll be giving a lot away." He spoke almost hesitantly. "Accidents. Mistakes. All the things that went wrong."

She laughed again, and dipped her head to his shoulder. "I may have used some creative license."

"You?" Jack was smiling now too. 

"When legend becomes fact," Irina said, "print the legend." 

So instead of the two people they were – sometimes blind, always suspicious, constantly lashing out at each other instead of the enemies that surrounded them – he and Irina would be portrayed in the books as star-crossed lovers, brilliant and courageous, destined to be together. As a connoisseur of lies, Jack knew a beautiful one when he saw it. 

"You've always known what to reveal and what to conceal –"

"Not always. I've kept too many secrets, and for too long. It's as significant an error as revealing too much."

"Believe me," he said. "I know. But what I was saying is – given your skills, I imagine you're a talented storyteller. That the book you've written is good."

"Why, thank you." Irina kissed his cheek, and her grin became wicked as she said the words that froze Jack to the spot. "Wait until you read the sex scenes."


	15. post season three, Vaughn kind of loses it

The pictures were the last straw. 

Vaughn was sitting on the floor of his house (their house), packing up. Lauren's clothes were the first to go, and he dutifully put them in sacks for Goodwill. They were more personal than anything else; it was impossible not to remember her in each outfit. The dark-blue suit she'd worn into the office after Sydney's return, desperate to look nice next to Vaughn's ex-girlfriend. The wine-colored silk dress she'd worn to that concert at the Hollywood Bowl, just after they got married. The black lace bra that Vaughn had always found so damn sexy –

He took another deep swig of the whiskey, stuffed the bra down into the sack with the rest of her stuff, and kept going. 

Most of the furniture had been pushed toward the centers of the rooms, to make it easier for the guys to haul it off. They'd picked this stuff out together as newlyweds, everything neither hers nor his but theirs. All the new things were tasteful and elegant, celadon green or smoky blue, colors that would remind Vaughn of her ever after. He had already resolved to paint the next place dark red, ceiling to floor. 

Goodwill would haul off the sofas, the chairs, the dressers and the bed. Vaughn couldn't wait to see the last of that bed. 

Hardest of all was accepting that he had to keep some things. CIA work paid well, but Vaughn couldn't afford to replace every single item he owned all at once. The dishes, for instance. Every meal he ate, he would have to spend pretending that he hadn't picked out this pattern with Lauren on his arm, hadn't put them in the registry for guests to buy as gifts for their wedding. 

Vaughn desperately wanted to be rid of all of it, and so he tried to take comfort in the things he was neither giving away nor keeping. The stuff he could throw in the goddamned trash. 

Her personalized stationery: He ripped it all into confetti, taking pleasure in every time he tore her name in two. 

The queen-size 700-thread count sheets. He'd made love to Lauren on them, so they were too contaminated for Goodwill. Vaughn slashed at them with the scissors until they were ribbons. 

And the pictures. Their wedding, their vacations, always Lauren's face, always smiling, and always him as the proud, happy fool –

Tearing wasn't enough. 

Vaughn grabbed his lighter and set one of the wedding portraits ablaze; Lauren the bride blackened, curled, became so much ash. When the flames licked at his fingers, Vaughn let the remnants of the picture fall, fluttering down into the torn paper and sheets at his feet. 

The first embers of the fire were the most beautiful thing Vaughn had ever seen. Something in him told him to stop, but it didn't speak loudly enough.

He didn't leave for a long time, long after it became dangerous – it just felt so damn good, watching it all burn.


	16. a chance encounter between spouses

**1984**

 

Suicide can go fast – a bullet to the brain, a leap from a bridge – or it can go slow. Irina has decided to take it slow. 

Sydney is lost forever. Jack is lost forever. Nadia is lost forever. The country she served faithfully -- the ones she gave up her husband and firstborn for -- imprisoned and tortured her; they took her baby away while Irina screamed and strained against the handcuffs until her wrists bled. She escaped from prison two years ago with no goal but finding Nadia, the only lost one she might ever get back; broken laws and dead bodies litter her path, but at the end there was no child, only empty rooms with echoes that mocked. 

A dozen different international organizations would kill her on sight, but she intends to beat them to it. 

Cocaine is the drug of choice these days, and she goes from nightclub to nightclub, party to party. All her aliases are just different names she gives at the door, now. She drinks too much champagne and eats almost nothing at all. Her shoulder blades jut out from her back like wings, and Irina can count her ribs. The nosebleeds are inconvenient, but she's long past caring. 

Prince blares over the loudspeakers as Irina stumbles through the crowd. She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirrors on the wall – hair backcombed into a halo, swathed in furs the color of good cognac. Irina isn't proud that she's still the most beautiful woman in the room; it merely strikes her as ironic. None of the men staring at her can see the despair, only the shell – not the man in the black coat, or the tall blond one, or –

\--or Jack.

Irina vanishes, flowing into the crowd the way she used to when she was a spy; it's not easy in these furs, but she can do it. Heart hammering, she reaches one of the faux-Grecian pedestals that passes for décor here, then checks again. Yes, it's really Jack. And either he didn't see her, or he has dismissed the vision as a moment's illusion. 

He looks like hell. His curly hair (once soft in her hands) has been shorn unfashionably short, and he's lost so much weight than he's even thinner than he was in college. But he doesn't look weak; he looks hard. Irina was never under any illusions about his profession (how could she be?), yet she never expected to see him so hardened. 

Jack thinks he has it bad, and he pities himself, though he will go home to his warm bed (their warm bed) and Sydney. Irina knows she shouldn't hate him for suffering less – he is still suffering – but she does, she does. 

Hatred fuels her escape from the club, the long night she spends pouring out every bottle of Champagne into the sink. She thinks she is stronger hating Jack than she was loving him, and wonders if he feels the same way.


	17. what if, in the pilot, Jack had gotten there in time?

The moment Sydney opened the door to Danny's apartment, she knew something was horribly wrong. The place was trashed (a robbery? An earthquake that didn't make the news?), and glass was broken, and oh God oh God a dead body –

\-- and Danny standing in the hallway, shellshocked and afraid, staring at her father. 

"The agency knows that you told Danny the truth," her father said. These were the first words he'd spoken to her in more than six months. "They sent an assassin to kill him. Danny will only survive if he goes into hiding. You'll naturally be suspected yourself, so I suggest you go with him. I have a plane waiting." 

Sydney stared. The first thing she could manage to say was, "You're CIA?" 

"Yes." 

"And you never told me?" 

Jack motioned at the dead assassin on the floor. "If the consequences of betraying security protocols weren't clear before, I think they should be now."

"Sydney –" Danny was whiter than his hospital coat, still half-hanging off his shoulder. "Is this real?" 

Francie. Will. Charlie. Amy. Grad school. Her apartment. Everything else about her life was burning around her, turning into smoke and ash, and only Danny was left. All because she'd broken the rules. 

"Yes," Sydney whispered. "It's real. We have to go." 

Her father drove toward the airfield at top speed, resolutely staring ahead. Sydney sat next to him, studying his profile as though she'd never seen him before; in the backseat, Danny was half-curled into a ball, muttering, "I shouldn't have made that call. I'm so stupid, so stupid –"

Sydney didn't answer him; it was more important to get answers from her father. "Did Mom know?" 

"Yes, always." Her father's voice could be icy even when speaking of Mom. "That's one of the reasons agents can no longer be so open." 

Tears began to fill her eyes. "Is that why she died?"

Her father hesitated. "KGB agents were involved. I'm not at liberty to tell you more. I can only say that – your mother understood the risks." Then he was all business again. "The plane will take you to Switzerland. Fake papers are on board, though I suggest you change them for others as soon as it's expedient. You should stay on the move for several months at least." 

"We'll be invisible," Sydney promised. She knew how to do that, and Danny – well, he could learn. 

Only when they reached the airfield did it occur to Sydney – her father was breaking the rules, too. "They'll know you did this. Won't they?" She stepped closer to him. "Dad – you'll go to prison –"

In his eyes she saw the truth of her words, but he said only, "Sydney, go." 

They never spoke again. 

In later years, Danny sometimes said, "At least now you know that your father loved you." 

Sometimes it felt like enough, for Sydney. Sometimes she wondered if it was enough for her father, in whatever jail held him. She would never know.


	18. Jack hates therapy with Dr. Barnett

"Obviously, you're not the first person I'd choose to discuss my problem with." Jack's glare was even deadlier than it had been all those years ago, when she called him on his games for the first time. "But, just as obviously, I have to discuss it with someone." 

Dr. Barnett crossed her legs at the ankle, drawing her best professional demeanor around her. "Our histories have some – overlap –"

Jack made a slightly rude noise in the back of his throat, which Dr. Barnett chose to ignore. 

"—that would normally preclude me from ever serving as your therapist again. But at this point, I'm the only available CIA therapist with the necessary security clearance." 

"I'm surprised your clearance survived your affair with Arvin Sloane." 

Normally, such personal baiting would be a sure sign that the patient-counselor relationship was unworkable. But Dr. Barnett had accepted that unusual solutions would be necessary, in this situation. "I had to go through a review, yes. But our superiors were remarkably understanding." It was even more unprofessional to attack, but Jack Bristow wouldn't listen any other way. "Arvin Sloane is noted for his ability to deceive even experienced professionals." _Such as yourself_ went unsaid.

Jack nodded, and the hint of a smile played on his lips. He respected bitterness. "I would have asked for you, in any case."

She tried not to let her surprise show. "That seems extremely – forgiving." 

"It isn't. You're the only therapist who has ever heard the details of my personal history, and you're the only one who'll ever hear it. It doesn't do any good to rehash the details." For the first time, Dr. Barnett saw a chink in Jack Bristow's cool façade – a hesitation, where there had been none. "And that history is relevant." 

"Okay." Pen at the ready, she cocked her head, inviting him to finally speak. "Explain to me how." 

Slowly, Jack said, "I am presently engaged in a sexual relationship that could be considered inappropriate." 

"Those kinds of labels are highly subjective, Jack. Are you the one who considers it inappropriate?"

"Yes. But I wouldn't be the only one." 

Dr. Barnett wondered precisely how Jack's personal history was involved with this. Irina Derevko would once have been her first guess, but Jack would report that straightforwardly. Her stomach twisted strangely as she wondered just how Arvin might be tangled in this – she'd never detected any suppressed homosexual angst in either of them, but – "Perhaps you should be more specific." 

"I'm sleeping with Nadia Santos." 

"Arvin Sloane's daughter with Irina Derevko. Sydney's sister." 

"Unless we've hired another Nadia Santos." Jack's limited patience was already running out. 

All the man's anger at Arvin Sloane – all his love for his daughter – and both the love and anger he felt for Irina Derevko – 

Nadia Santos sat at the center of every single emotional vulnerability Dr. Barnett had ever detected in Jack Bristow.

She said only, "That's problematic." 

"I'm so glad I have a professional to tell me these things."


	19. somehow 1981 gets even worse for Jack

Four months, three weeks and two days. 

Jack didn't keep track of the time by drawing marks on the wall or notching the corner of his bed; he had nothing to make marks or notches with, nor anything but a thin mattress on the floor. But he had kept track of when he slept and when he ate, so he knew the precisely how long he'd been kept in solitary confinement. 

The only faces he'd seen had been his questioners, interrogating him about his supposed collaboration with the KGB – shouts and insults about his wife (not his wife), about Laura (not Laura), about how no man could be a big enough fool to be completely taken in, not by a woman. 

Jack hadn't answered them. How could he? His blindness was as inexplicable to him as to them. 

Sometimes he hated the dead Irina Derevko so much he thought he would die of it, too. Sometimes he realized that what he hated her for most was killing his wife Laura; those were the times when Jack wondered if he'd gone insane. 

Always, he thought of Sydney – utterly alone, orphaned of her lying mother and no doubt bewildered by the abandonment of her father. They had not let Jack see her after his arrest, not even allowed him to make a call or write a letter to come up with some possible explanation. He knew they'd hired her a nanny (probably another spy, sweeping the house countless times for Derevko's hidden tools), but beyond that, he had no idea what had become of his daughter. 

_She won't even look the same,_ Jack thought. _They grow up so fast –_

Metal clanged, then again: the doors leading to his cell were being opened. Jack straightened up, ran his fingers through his hair and beard; they had defeated him, but he'd be damned if they'd show it. 

Two guards walked in first and handcuffed Jack. Then two more men in suits, agents he didn't know, stepped in after. In the hallway behind them stood Arvin Sloane, tears running down his face, and when their eyes met, Jack knew.

"Jonathan Donahue Bristow, you have been judged guilty of treason against the United States government through your collaboration with a known agent of the KGB." 

No trial, not for something like this. No appeals, no evidence, no hope. Just the syringe in the man's hands. Jack would die today, probably within the next sixty seconds. 

_Sydney's first steps. Racing Emily back to the beach house the couples had rented for a week. Sydney on her first day of school, nervous in her pigtails. Smoking cigars with Arvin at a bar in Havana. Laura in the bathtub, blowing bubbles playfully from her fingertips. Sydney as a baby, small enough to fit in his hands._

They angled the needle toward his arm. Jack said the only thing worth saying: "Arvin, take care of my daughter." 

He heard Arvin's answer – "Always" – and then a sting, the fall, the dark.


	20. sometimes you have to go the extra mile to distract a guard

Sydney hiked up her skirt, tousled her hair and licked her lips. Then she sashayed around the corner toward the security guard. 

"Pardon," she whispered, in a French accent. "I am lost." 

"Not my problem." 

"But – please, sir –" Sydney widened her eyes, let them become a little dewy. A sexy young woman, lost on an evening stroll, probably a little drunk, so very vulnerable – the guard could want to protect her or victimize her, whatever worked for him, as long as it got him to step away from the door. Either way, surely he would be moved. 

Yet the guard didn't budge. "I got a job here, lady. Move it or I report you." 

"You cannot walk me to ze corner?"

He said nothing, staring at her blankly until she had to shrug and walk away, more than a little bit embarrassed. 

Back in the ops van, Vaughn reassured her that she was as sexy as ever, while Weiss became grumpy. "I KNEW we should've brought the stun guns. When is it ever a bad time to have stun guns?"

"We don't have them," Nadia reminded him, smoothing the tight leather pants she now wore. "But we do have other weapons."

Nadia tried next. Where Sydney had been helpless and drunk, Nadia was cool and confident; she met the guard's eyes evenly and asked him if he had a light. 

"Move it, lady. And smoking's bad for your health." 

When she returned to the van, Nadia shrugged. 

"We're ignoring the most obvious possibility, you know," Vaughn said. Everyone glanced at him, confused. 

Ten minutes later, Vaughn wore blue jeans and a mesh shirt as he strolled toward the guard. "This is NOT the club," he said, almost as if talking to himself.

The guard smiled – just a little. "The club?"

"There was a poster in this bar nearby – I could've sworn it gave this address." 

The guard smiled a little more. "That explains all the foot traffic." 

"Too bad I wasted my time." Vaughn lowered his face, then glanced up, just with his eyes. The expression wasn't exactly shy. 

"Maybe it wasn't a waste of time," the guard suggested – finally, finally taking a step away from the door. 

Some increasingly suggestive banter later, the guard finally left to take a stroll with Vaughn, and Sydney, Nadia and Weiss were able to get into the warehouse. Nadia kept laughing. Weiss looked a little seasick. 

When Vaughn finally returned an hour later, Sydney was waiting for him outside the van. "Welcome back," she murmured, kissing him on the cheek. "So, how far did you have to go?" 

"Not far. Made up a big story about the guy who just dumped me. Added in a lot of details about how he'd screwed me over – by the end, I actually sort of hated the bastard." Vaughn grinned. "How do you do this all the time?" 

"You get used to it." 

He laughed as he embraced her. "No offense, but I hope I don't."


	21. Grandpa Bristow

Jack is the oldest man in the waiting room. One man is perhaps ten years younger than him – salt-and-pepper in his beard – but he wears jeans and a blazer over his T-shirt, looks casual and relaxed. 

In his suit and tie, Jack does not look casual or relaxed. 

Given his profession, Jack is naturally uncomfortable in any situation where he stands out from the crowd. Not that it's dangerous here, but still. He could never be complacent about becoming conspicuous. 

He tries to tell himself that he looks like precisely what he is: a grandfather, at least a grandfather to be. None of the younger men or pregnant women sitting in the waiting room (leafing through magazines with battered pages, smiling mommies holding smiling babies on every cover) will draw any significant conclusions about him. 

But they will draw conclusions about Sydney. Those conclusions will not constitute the entire truth, but all the same, Jack doesn't like it. They'll know that she's alone, and they'll guess that she's lonely. Jack feels as though he is giving away her secrets, just by sitting here. 

In an attempt at looking natural, he picks up one of the magazines. The crossword is a joke. Might as well read the articles. 

Apparently babies are only to sleep on their backs now; this is news to Jack, who remembers Sydney sleeping happily on her tummy. He and Laura would stand on opposite sides of the crib, whispering to each other about their day, as they each stroked their daughter's back. The mobile had moons and stars and planets in brightly colored felt, and the nursery was its own tiny universe. But it seems they were doing it all wrong. 

No surprise there, really. 

He lets the magazine drop into a nearby chair. A boy who hardly looks old enough to have graduated from college gives him a sheepish grin. For the first time, Jack realizes that he has one thing in common with the other men: impatience. His returning smile is forced, but perhaps it will do. 

"Mr. Bristow?" The nurse peers into the room. "We're ready for you." 

When he is ushered into Sydney's room, Jack is surprised by the swell of her belly. Not that he doesn't see her every day – but the skin, the flesh, the reality of it: that's new to him. It hits him again that the pregnant woman on the examination table is the same baby who napped beneath the circling stars, and it feels both impossible and inevitable. 

"They didn't have sonograms when Mom was pregnant with me, did they?" Sydney takes his hand. 

"Not yet." Jack has seen grainy images of such things before, usually thrust at him by well-meaning expectant parents (such as Marshall) in the break room. The process never struck him as interesting until now. 

"So this is your first time," the doctor says, beginning to cover her instrument with clear gel. 

Sydney smiles up at him, unafraid. "Yes," Jack says. "It's all new."


	22. Eric gets pulled back into APO

Everybody says Virginia is the South. Magnolias. Mint juleps. Warm weather. Right? 

Right, Weiss thought, up until the first snowfall. 

He'd had enough of the white stuff to last a lifetime on missions to Russia, Finland, Chile and Antarctica. In Los Angeles, you didn't have to worry about digging your car out of a snowbank in the morning. 

Well, it was as good an excuse as any to give up the DC job and move back. 

"I missed you," Sydney said, hugging him warmly. "You have to come over and see the baby!" He didn't know how he was supposed to get through looking at Vaughn's child without crying, but he'd just have to manage. Just as long as the baby didn't, like, smile or something. Then he'd lose it.

"We can certainly use you," Jack said. "But you have to be careful about forming attachments that impede your objectivity." Weiss thought that was kind of rich, coming from a guy who was still tangled up with both Arvin Sloane and Irina Derevko. Then he realized that Jack was sharing a lesson he'd learned the hard way. Too bad it was the kind of wisdom you could only see in the rear-view mirror. 

Nadia was still a shadow of her vibrant self. She lay amid a nest of wires, and what little illusion of peaceful sleep she'd had before was gone now. _This is torture_ , Weiss thought, but it wasn't his place to tell Sloane or Syd to end it. He could only silently promise not to remember her like this. 

Despite the weirdness and sadness of the welcome, Weiss knew he was back where he belonged. But it wasn't all familiar, because they had new people on the team. 

Tom -- good guy. Weiss arrived at this assessment by asking Tom about hockey and the Super Bowl; the answers were satisfactory. They went out for beers a couple times. He wasn't looking for a new best friend -- that probably would never happen again, not like with Mike -- but he could always use a pal, especially one who turned out to have season tickets for the Dodgers. 

And then there was Rachel. 

She was gorgeous. That didn't matter too much. Yeah, pretty, _hello_ , but there was no shortage of pretty in any office where Sydney and Hayden Chase both graced the hallways. Besides, nobody would ever be lovelier to Weiss as Nadia. 

But she was -- lost. Vulnerable. She wasn't sure about APO or about being in the CIA, period. Something about the fear in her eyes cut right down to the core of him. 

Weiss started taking her to lunch, then to dinner. Just to talk, he said. He believed it, too, right up until the Madrid op. In the last half-second before she had to go into the field, Rachel lay one hand on his wrist for reassurance. With that single touch, Weiss knew he was in trouble. 

He'd have been better off braving the snow.


	23. Tom is bitter

"So tell me," Sydney says, as if she were purely making conversation on a long, dull stakeout, "were you always a loner?"

Tom leans back in his seat, keeps his eyes focused on the warehouse on the other side of the street. It's cold in Copenhagen, and the single heater in the van that works is the one on the floor. Only their feet are warm. "No. Not always." 

"What changed you?" 

"A woman. What else?" 

She raises an eyebrow. Tom realizes that Sydney thinks he's joking -- and that she likes him a little better for it. "Of course. That would explain it." 

"Women explain everything. Or, at least, they try." 

The mild misogyny silences her, which was the point. Tom knows he has to stop pushing Sydney Bristow away eventually, but he's not going to stop tonight. 

As the warehouse is best viewed from the van's passenger-side window, Tom has an excuse to look at Sydney; he is very good at making it seem as though he is looking past her. He's not certain that he's fooling her, though. Sydney is a hard woman to fool. 

This is precisely why he's not sure he's going to be able to keep this up much longer. 

Her hands rest upon her belly, not stroking or rubbing but purely as reassurance -- whether to Sydney or the child within, Tom doesn't know and doesn't care to guess. She is even larger than she was last week; he can see the difference. Remembering his Bible studies when he was small, Tom thinks that for the first time he actually understands the phrase "great with child." 

Her hair is dark. But in so many other ways -- the eyes, the lips, the tilt of her head -- Sydney is too familiar to him. 

She will keep searching for answers, and someday Tom will give them to her. He will confess to her -- in his mind, he is on his knees during the telling; he can envision his wet face, but doesn't know if he is prophesying tears or rain. Tom will be humbled. Tom will break down. And Tom will tell her everything. 

_I was in love,_ he'll say. _Not so long ago. She was another CIA operative, one under deep cover, beautiful and desperate and lost. I was the only person who made contact with her, the only one she had to rely on. She had another lover, a man who treated her badly and used her body, and I had to live with the fact that she was lonely enough to accept that. And she had another love, a man whose perfection I could never touch, and I was too proud to try._

_But I loved her. I took her to bed only once, and the night is one I'm never going to get over. One I'm always going to remember._

_What I don't understand is how you could pretend to forget._

_Or why you always called yourself Julia Thorne._


	24. a sordid affair

They have been lovers for two weeks -- five separate couplings, to be exact (and he is always exact), varying from a languid night in a beachside inn to a hurried, desperate encounter in the stairwell of the parking garage. Of all of these, Jack preferred the stairwell; he found the sordidness of the setting appropriate. But it was too dangerous, too likely to be discovered, and not useful to him, which is of course key.

The sixth time takes place in her home. Jack has been waiting for this invitation -- it's critical to what he has to accomplish -- but he knew he'd have to wait for her to make it. While the rest of the team completes a routine surveillance op in Bolivia, Jack makes love to her in the bed she normally shares with her husband. This, too, is sordid, but he doesn't find it pleasing. 

It's not as though Vaughn and Lauren's marriage bed has any sacredness left to defile. 

Lauren lies next to him afterward, her slim, perfect body an unwelcome contrast to his own. However, the recognition of his years compared to her youth doesn't make Jack feel insecure. For that, Lauren's opinion would have to matter to him, and it doesn't. 

They told Vaughn that he would have to go on as usual with Lauren, even knowing that she was a double agent. Vaughn couldn't. So he was sent on a "long-term mission," and in order to draw Lauren out, a new hook was baited for her. Jack didn't have to pretend to be lonely for very long. She is quick to see opportunities -- quicker, thankfully, than she is to see a trap. 

But then, as her pink-painted nails stroke his thigh, Lauren murmurs, "You're here for a reason. Aren't you?"

He plays it coy, smiling at her the way he did 15 minutes ago, when they were making love. "I'd think that reason had become obvious. If not, I'll have to demonstrate again." 

She laughs softly. "Give me some credit, Jack. You always have an agenda. I know that as well as anyone else who's worked with you." 

"What agenda do you think I'm promoting here?" 

"You want to break up my marriage. To return Vaughn to Sydney. You still think of my husband as your daughter's property, don't you?" 

She has supplied him with an ulterior motive to cover his real one; she doesn't suspect the bugs that he's planted in her gear this evening. Jack doesn't have to feign his smile. "You see right through me." 

"And don't you ever forget it." Lauren laughs as she clambers atop him, hands on either side of his shoulders. "But this isn't love for either of us. Just sex. Right?" 

Through the intel they'll get from her, and the false info he's going to feed her during this affair, the CIA will lock down on the Covenant within weeks. "I understand. I won't get confused." He kisses her deeply. "I promise."


	25. while Nadia was sleeping

Nadia's world is built entirely of voices. Words are her architecture, whispers the only colors that she knows. Dimly she knows there should be more than this -- she remembers light, touch, smell and taste, in the brief splinters of consciousness that allow her memory -- but her existence seems no less rich than before. In some ways, she thinks it is even more beautiful.

Eric came all the time at first, but he is gone now. Not long after he went away, her father returned at last. They say the same things: Nadia will get better, become strong, "wake up." Did they ever realize that they sound so much alike? That their words are identical -- promises formed of what love _should_ be, of ideals and not reality? Now Nadia can see the symmetry between them as never before. But she still takes comfort in the lullaby they create, as though Eric had sung the first lines and her father the last.

Sydney's voice is clearest. Nadia thinks Sydney is the only one who truly expects her words to be heard, and this is why her sister's words make sense. There are never empty promises, only news. Mom is safe; Vaughn isn't with us; a baby is on the way. These are facts, and Nadia can hold on to facts; in the transparent, shifting universe she inhabits, the things Sydney says provide the only opacity and truth. When Sydney speaks, Nadia thinks of crisp fall breezes, sea mist on her cheeks and the glittering snowcaps of mountains. 

Jack speaks slowly. He doesn't come often, but he stays a very long time when he does. Nadia likes this. The longer she has to sink into a voice, the more vivid it becomes to her. Mostly he tells Nadia how she is, mentions whatever is in the newspaper that day. She can hear his motives as surely as his breaths -- obligation is what brings him here -- but it is obligation to Nadia herself, not to duty or her father or anything else, and so it is beautiful as well. Jack gives her world deeper shades, etchings and carvings, throwing everything that matters into relief. 

Marshall brought a little radio that plays music, from time to time. He explained how it worked -- something to do with magnetism, no ordinary radios for Marshall -- and Nadia loved the splashing of his voice, light and bubbles and tumbling over and over itself like a fountain. (She doesn't like the radio, though. Those are not voices, just noise.) Dixon only came once, but he was a clarion trumpet, a marble floor, everything solid and good and strong. 

Sometimes there are voices she doesn't know. Someone named Tom reads her a book, for some reason she can't guess. But his voice wraps her in warmth, makes her taste honey, and once in a while, Nadia thinks she might just have to wake up one of these days, if only to see his face.


	26. Tom considers APO

The strangest thing about APO, in Tom's opinion, is that they all love each other. 

Make no mistake: in espionage circles, that's beyond weird. Tom has spent almost his entire CIA career -- more than a third of his life, now -- in deep-cover assignments, which means that he's seen how it's done. Black ops, arms runners, jihadists, you name it. Sometimes the ties that bind are woven of loyalty, or political convictions, or money. Mostly it's money. Genuine friendships and romances bloom even in this hard, dry ground, but they wither fast. Usually, the more professional the operation, the less likely it is that anyone gives a damn if anyone else lives or dies. Everything runs more smoothly that way. 

Tom doesn't shock easily, not anymore, but he still had to conceal his amazement the first time he ever spoke to Director Bristow. The casual reference to one of the group's agents as "my daughter" -- it sounded like a recipe for disaster, frankly. When he realized that the daughter in question was hugely, roundly pregnant, Tom excused himself to the men's room to laugh silently in a stall for a very long time. What the hell kind of setup was this? 

But Sydney proved herself quickly, and Tom was startled to realize that he was expected to prove himself to her. Before long he realized that Sydney's presence was no nepotism hire, but that she was in fact the center of APO, the hub of the wheel around which everything else turned. Dixon dotes on her. Marshall worships her. Sloane thaws in her presence. Rachel seems to have imprinted on Syd like a new-hatched gosling. And Director Bristow -- well, he'd be hard-pressed to describe the father-daughter relationship, but Tom knows that they're deeply bound together, perhaps more so than they realize. 

Sydney may be this organization's core, but the bonds of affection Tom sees aren't exclusive to her. Dixon gives tips on surviving the terrible twos to Marshall while they drink their morning coffee. Sloane and Director Bristow are friendly to each other when they think no one's looking. 

Director Bristow is sometimes friendly to Tom, as well. He gets the impression that kind of acceptance isn't something handed out lightly. Every once in a while, Dixon chats with him about basketball, something safe like that. Sydney has yet to crack a smile in Tom's presence, but on November 1, he found a couple of Hershey's miniatures and Pixie Stix on his desk -- and he knows there's only one person who would even think of inviting a black ops unit to share leftover Halloween candy. 

The agents are, individually and as a group, as tight a unit as Tom has seen -- but all groups are flawed. If he were going to tear APO apart, destroy it from inside, that's where he'd begin: their love for one another. 

Tom always looks for the jugular, the killing blow. He doesn't know any other way to study people.


	27. Syd remembers Danny

Sydney misses Danny, these days. 

It's not that Sydney doesn’t still love Vaughn desperately; her need for her child's father is with her every hour. But that same omnipresence has dulled the edges of her loneliness. Missing Vaughn isn't something Sydney does -- it's a part of her, like her hair or her fingernails. 

Missing Danny is something Sydney does. 

The memories rose up about the same time her pregnancy began showing. The first time she pressed her palm upon her belly and really felt the curve, she heard Danny, so clearly that he might have been standing next to her: _I can't believe there's a baby in there._

He'd loved children so much. At the hospital, Danny had worked with terribly sick children; he could cope with them when they were in pain, throwing up, asking unanswerable questions about death. Often, hearing about his patients, Sydney quailed from the thought of having children. It seemed so dangerous, gambling with your heart. 

Danny thought it was worth the gamble. He'd made Sydney believe it too. She wouldn't have responded with delight to the news of her pregnancy if she hadn't known him. 

So she often recalls Danny's longing for children, but not only that. More of her memories of their time together return all the time. When she makes breakfast, she remembers Danny fixing her egg-white omelets with onions and peppers -- his specialty. When she drives to work, she tunes the radio away from the jazz station Vaughn liked, seeking the pop songs she and Danny sang along to. One evening, she even watches a Three Stooges movie on cable. Sydney hates the Three Stooges. But that night she can only hear Danny's laughter, imagine the kiss on her cheek. 

_You're so good, to put up with this for me._

Eventually, Sydney has to talk about this with someone. As it happens, there's only one person left in her life who remembers Danny. 

"You haven't mentioned him in a while." Jack glances up only briefly from the assembly instructions for the crib. 

"I didn't think about him much for a while." It hurts to admit that. "But now Danny's with me all the time." 

"Vaughn kept you from thinking about Danny. Before." Jack doesn't meet her eyes. "You don't have that now." 

A hard truth, clumsily delivered: this is what comes of confiding in her father. And yet Jack's right. 

Sydney never finished grieving for Danny; she fell in love again, and she's not sorry, but her mourning isn't over. Perhaps, before she begins this next stage in her life, she has to say farewell to everything that went before. So she lets herself remember Danny, his laughter, his courage and his warmth. If she could see him once more to say goodbye, Sydney would thank him for loving her so well. She would tell him that he made her ready to be a mother. And she would not let him go without giving him one last, heartfelt kiss.


	28. thanksgiving dinner, season five

Last time Sydney celebrated Thanksgiving, she was living with Francie. Will brought that young girl from the newspaper; Charlie brought an engagement ring for Francie. There were tears and hugs, wine and laughter. Despite the scorched turkey, the meal Francie prepared was excellent. Her father only came to the doorstep, but in its own small way, that visit made the night complete. 

Since then, she's either been out of the country on Thanksgiving Day or alone. Not this year. A whopping 36 hours before the event, Sydney decides she's having dinner at her place. For everyone. 

"All right," Jack says. His attention is turned inward, as if he's trying to assess the potential dangers of Thanksgiving. "Should I bring something?"

"You don't cook." 

"Neither do you. Therefore, we should examine the necessity of purchasing food." 

This isn't the spirit of the thing, but Jack has a point. Sydney tasks him with finding a good bakery and buying pies. 

"I wasn't planning on doing anything." Thomas blinks in surprise at the invitation. 

"No family gathering?" Sydney isn't surprised when he doesn't answer. "Just say you'll come." Slowly, Tom nods. 

"Sweet potato casserole is my specialty," Rachel promises, lifting bags of marshmallows from her grocery sack. "And we're going to have cornbread stuffing, right? My mom and I would always make that together." Her voice trails off, too late to hide her wistfulness for the family she can't see right now, or maybe ever again. Sydney tells Rachel that they'll all be relying on her, as the lone cook of the group, and that makes her smile. 

"It's -- polite of you to ask," Sloane says. "But I'm polite enough to refuse." 

Sydney folds her arms across her chest. "Nadia would want you there. That means I want you there." It's true, or true enough. She can handle it for one day. Sloane's smile is disbelieving and humble; he promises to bring excellent wine. 

Dixon brings his two children, homemade rolls and Hayden Chase. Marshall, Carrie and Mitchell come bearing honey-baked ham; their arrival somehow doubles the noise in Sydney's apartment, but that's okay. 

It's not an easy group. These people don't have that much in common outside work, and nobody can talk shop in front of Carrie and the kids. But slowly they find their way. Dixon, Tom and Stephen critique the Lions' defense. Chase and Rachel turn out to be fans of the same series of mystery novels. Marshall chatters to Sloane about anything and everything.

Sydney works in the kitchen. Jack helps her. They say almost nothing, but that's okay too. They always cooperate best in silence.

"How does it look?" Jack stands behind Sydney as she peers through the oven door at the slow-cooking turkey. 

She remembers a dish Francie would make: "Hope-To-God Casserole," which involved throwing together virtually every leftover in the fridge and seeing what happened. Surprisingly, most of the time, it tasted pretty good. 

Sydney opens the oven door, sniffs and smiles. "Just fine."


	29. one theory as to where Vaughn could've been during Season Five

Vaughn has been in the same room for six months straight. There is a small window, too tiny to climb out yet big enough to provide a view -- but it is covered by a small eyelet curtain, and Vaughn still isn't strong enough to get out of bed and look for himself. 

He has books to read, as many as he likes. For the first several weeks, he was on heavy painkillers and didn't have the attention span to concentrate. Now, though, he's knocking out three or four novels a week. Although Vaughn suspects he could make requests, he prefers seeing what his jailer chooses for him. It's a window into a mind he's always wanted to understand. 

"You always read the nonfiction first," Irina says to him over dinner. Only then does Vaughn realize that he's given her a window into his mind, too. 

Vaughn takes another bite of steak to avoid answering. He's only been allowed to eat red meat for a month; it's still deliciously new. The steak is excellent, and Irina has brought it to him on a china plate. She always has at least one meal of the day with him, whether either of them likes it or not. 

It's wrong, thinking of her as his jailer. Irina's protecting him, taking care of him while he recovers from his wounds, and hiding him from the many who would gladly kill anyone connected with Prophet Five. This is the plan Jack outlined in the hospital; Vaughn has no reason to think Irina has deviated from it. 

But sometimes, late at night, especially when the pain is bad, Vaughn's paranoia kicks in. What if Irina has her own agenda? It wouldn't be the first time she'd lied to Sydney and Jack. Hell, what if Jack's in on it? He always wanted Vaughn out of the picture, didn't he?

Vaughn knows better than to believe in these conspiracies -- at least, most of the time. 

Irina finishes her own steak. "You seem focused tonight. We should work on the Prophet Five notebooks. I'm sending a coded transmission tomorrow; the more information we can include, the better." 

"I want to send a message to Sydney."

"We've been over this." She's not amused. "Any message could fall into the wrong hands. We can't take the risk." 

"I need to talk to her." He's come down to this: begging Irina Derevko. "She's having my child, and I can't even see her. I could at least say --" 

"You could say enough to damn you both." Irina snaps. "I went twenty years without speaking to my husband or my child, for their safety as well as my own. Are you too weak to do the same?" 

He whispers, "It's hard." 

She nods, slowly. "At least you have the luxury of knowing Sydney and your child will welcome you home. I didn't." 

Vaughn's tired of her lectures, tired of the fact that she's right. "Bring the notebooks. Let's get to work."


	30. cravings

First, it was tangerines. 

"Gotcha one of the large sacks," Marshall said, depositing the bag on Sydney's desk. "You can just go through the little suckers, can't you? I didn't mean you as in YOU, like you're a big eater or something -- I think we all, when confronted with the yumminess of the tangerine, discover our inner glutton." 

"I'm not offended," Sydney promised with a smile. She dug her fingernails in beneath the rind. "Just grateful." 

"Anytime. Carrie never had cravings, even though I was kinda waiting for them." Marshall looked a bit sheepish confessing that he was disappointed not have run those errands. "So, this is kind of fun." 

Sydney couldn't answer, because her mouth was already full of fruit. 

Then it was red meat. 

"Rare is fine," she said, looking down at the meat sizzling on the grill with unconcealed longing. 

"Rare is _not_ fine for a pregnant woman." Dixon spoke as sternly as any man could while wearing a KISS THE COOK apron. "Hang on a few minutes, okay?" 

Sydney tried pouting, but she should have known better than to think it would work on a man with two teenage children. She relented with a smile. "It's good of you to do this for me." 

"No problem." He grinned. "Who doesn't love steak? Gives me and the kids an excuse for a cookout." 

After that, it was corn on the cob. 

"I bought as many ears as they had at the farmers' market." Jack still had beads of rain on his trenchcoat. "This should be enough for a week or so." 

"Maybe a couple of days." Already Sydney was running water into a pot, ready to boil up a few. 

"You can't go through that many yourself that quickly." 

"Nope." She pulled a chair out as an invitation. "But the two of us can. You bought butter too, right?" 

"Butter. No. I didn't think of that." Jack immediately walked toward the door, heading back into the rain for butter without waiting to be asked. 

In her last trimester, it was Milky Way bars. 

Tom emerged from a market in Brussels with a bag tucked under his arm; he slipped easily into the surveillance van. "Next time you crave a product made in America, you might want to be in America." 

"But you found them, right?"

"I did." 

Sydney opened the bag, then sagged in disappointment. "These are Milky Way Darks." 

"Don't be so picky."

Easy for Tom to say -- she'd seen him make a supper out of cold salami and root beer. "It's not me being picky. It's the baby." 

He snapped, "Okay, then, find your own chocolate bars!" 

She stared at him and slowly began to smile. "Thank you."

Tom laughed, rueful. "For getting the wrong candy?"

"For admitting that it's a nuisance. You're the first person who's been honest with me about it." 

He shook his head, still amused. "You need people to be honest about _that_?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "Sometimes I do."


	31. what Jack and Arvin don't say to one another

When Arvin Sloane first met Jack Bristow, it was the late 1960s and the subject simply wasn't talked about. Ever. From the perspective of 2005, Arvin finds it almost unimaginable that so many people could be so silent about such a large current of human thought and feeling -- but they could, and they did, as he knows very well from his own wordlessness. 

The boys he met in college (men, he thought then, but now knows them to have been boys) did not expect acknowledgment of what happened between them, and would in fact have been horrified if Arvin had broken that silence. So would he have been. 

He was Emily's husband for more than 30 years, and they shared a bed (and fantasies, and laughter, and occasionally even a bona fide kink) without Arvin ever mentioning it. Once. Not as a predilection, not as experience, not at all. 

And all that time -- it never felt as though he were holding back. Arvin said nothing because he didn't have anything to say. He didn't even think about it, when he could help it, and when he did, his thoughts were half-formed, shapes and sensations rather than words that could ever have been spoken aloud. 

Sometimes Arvin speculates that, if it weren't for Jack Bristow, he might have stopped having those thoughts altogether. 

He hasn't stopped having them, of course. 

Arvin will never speak of it. It's nobody's business but his and Jack's, and Jack -- would not want to hear it. Sometimes Arvin finds it amusing to conjecture Jack's possible responses to such a confession, and when he wants to be especially inscrutable, he imagines them while he's looking Jack straight in the eye and talking about something else. Jack's eyes narrow, and he becomes alert, like a bloodhound picking up scent. But Arvin is quite certain Jack will never find the real trail. 

(Irina, on the other hand -- she suspects. Perhaps she knows. Arvin always understood, on that level language doesn't touch, _why_ he wanted Laura so much, why it was important to be as close to her as a human being could be. Their affair began the first time he looked into her eyes and glimpsed her recognition there. What he loved, she loved. What he wanted, she wanted. But what she had, he could never take from her.) 

Honestly, he doesn't regret the silence. Given the things Arvin has to regret, this hardly qualifies as important. 

But he does sometimes wonder, of an evening, what it would be like to be a young man now. To exist in this culture of flexibility, of shifting identities that aren't just skin-deep but strike to the bone. What Jack Bristow might have been like if he'd been born to an era that didn't wall men up behind bricks of conformity, and all the many things Arvin might have said to him. All the things he might have been to Jack. All the things he might have been.


	32. Cuvee evaluates his hold over Irina

During the first days of the courtship of Jack Bristow, there were no limits. 

"Does he love you?" Gerard Cuvee would ask as he unzipped Irina Derevko's skirt, peeling it away from her in the privacy of their hotel room. 

"Not yet." Irina would lie back for him, grinning broadly, proud of her deception and eager to please him, both in bed and in her KGB work. "But soon, I think." 

"My little witch." He'd whisper the endearment in her ear and enjoy her attentions all night long. When possible, he preferred to have her the day before Bristow would; it amused him to think of the CIA agent taking only the seconds. 

As the courtship continued, however, certain limits began to be imposed. 

The first limitation was time; that was inevitable. As Bristow fell for "Laura," he naturally expected to spend more and more time with her, and Cuvee's meetings with Irina became more rare. That alone would not have troubled him. But other limitations presented themselves as well. 

He began to notice that she never initiated sex between them any longer, and when he did, her response was -- warm, yes, even welcoming, but no longer possessed of any fire. At first Cuvee decided that her enforced sexual relationship with Bristow was wearying for her, and tried to make it a joke between them. He whispered, "Which of us knows how to love you better, hmm? Him or me?"

Irina calmly answered, "Why, you, of course." But in her eyes glimmered with a deep, private amusement that Cuvee did not like. He didn't ask her that question again. 

After her marriage, Irina began to find excuses to avoid sex. Some of them made rational sense; a husband doesn't only see his wife in bed, but in the bathroom, when she dresses, so on and so forth. Fingernail marks on the back, bruises around the hips -- these would be difficult to explain. A risk to the mission. 

Cuvee promised to be gentle. He took his time, conjugating verbs in Latin in his mind while he was inside her, undermining his own enjoyment so that he could extend her unhappiness. By now he knew that their sexual relationship made Irina deeply unhappy, and if she could have the audacity to feel that way about it, then in his opinion, she should be made to feel that way as deeply and often as possible. 

Finally the day when she told him, flatly, that they wouldn't have sex again for months. 

Cuvee traced a fingertip along her cheek. "Sometimes I begin to believe that you're fond of your Agent Bristow. Should I report this suspicion to our superiors?" 

Irina lifted her chin and covered her belly with one hand. "You should report to our superiors that I'm pregnant with Jack's child." 

Cuvee knew he still held the true power over Bristow -- the secrets the KGB gained were proof of that -- but sometimes, it didn't feel that way at all.


	33. four people try to stop Kelly Peyton

The shadowy figure at the end of the warehouse hall might have been Kelly Peyton, or it might not. Sydney could have fired her weapon -- finger on the trigger, dead-center aim, straight shot -- but she didn't. 

If it was Kelly Peyton, then she held the cure for Nadia, and that one death would be worth it. For her sister, Sydney would kill. But it might just have been a lab tech, not holding the cure for Nadia or anything else, and Sydney wasn't willing to take that risk. 

She let her gun drop to her side as the last footsteps of the fleeing woman -- Peyton or not -- faded into silence. 

**

Jack fired the gun. 

Something about a woman's scream was worse than a man's, he thought as he walked through a cloud of gun smoke toward his target. 

Peyton lay on the floor, clutching her thigh. She was curled almost into a fetal position; Jack was familiar with the posture, often the overwhelming last instinct of the mortally wounded. The bright arterial blood gushing between her fingers suggested they didn't have long to talk, and she knew it. 

"I can call an ambulance for you," he said. 

"You won't," Peyton spat. Her voice shook, but from adrenalin, not fear. Jack could respect that.

"I will, if you tell me what I need to know." Her silence could have been agreement or contempt. "Where is the cure for Nadia?" 

Peyton laughed, short and shallow. Not much breath to spare. 

"In Sydney's heart," she said, and died. 

In Jack's report, he said that Peyton didn't live long enough to talk. 

**

"In Sydney's heart," Peyton said, and died. 

Irina had always known she would have to make the choice someday. She had never expected the choice to be so bitter or so literal. 

That night, when she met up with her family for their rendezvous, Irina said nothing in front of Jack. Only when he went on watch, and when she was alone with Sydney, could the decision be made. 

"You mean -- I've got the implant. It's been inside me all along." Sydney's bewildered stare was turned inward, as though she could glimpse in her mind's eye this stowaway cure. 

"Yes. The risk is to you, Sydney. So it's your decision."

After a long silence, Sydney said, "I can't. Not now." Her hands cradled her swollen belly, cherishing her baby as Irina silently gave up hers.

**

"In Sydney's heart," Peyton said, and died. 

Sloane met up with Sydney not long afterward. That night, he had the terrible duty of informing Jack and Irina that Kelly Peyton had murdered their daughter, stabbing her viciously in the chest. They hated him for stealing their revenge by murdering Peyton himself. 

Weeks later, when Nadia's recovery was well underway, Sloane finally told her that her sister had died. "She would have done anything for you," he whispered into his weeping child's hair. "That kind of love has no limits."


	34. Jack/Renee

"Thanks," Renee says as she steers the Renault toward Barajas airport. 

Jack, eaten alive with worry for Sydney and his grandchild, takes a moment to realize she's spoken. "For what?" 

"Letting me finish DeSantis. I needed to do that. You knew, didn't you?" 

"Sydney said he looked like your father." 

"He stole my father's face. He made me hope." 

Now, when Jack tries to believe that they'll find Sydney in Hungary, safe and well with her child still inside her, he knows better than ever how cruel hope can be. "Then I'm glad you had the privilege." 

She looks at him, just for an instant when the traffic is still, and Jack knows then the shape her gratitude will take, if he allows it. He's inclined not to. Renee is his type, if too young for him, but Jack has begun to think that he should look for a new type. Dangerous women with dead aim and hidden agendas haven't made his life any easier, that's for sure. 

In Hungary, they find only an empty nursery. It's hard for Jack to know what sickens him most: the evidence that someone wanted to take his grandchild away, the thought of that child spending even one night in a place so bleak, or the simple fact that Sydney isn't here to be saved. 

For a long time, he stares at the empty nursery, his gun still in his hand -- absurd now, as though he were going to shoot the chicken-shaped mobile. But then Renee touches his shoulder, and says she's sorry as though she means it. 

He lets the gun drop. 

"We could wait here," Renee says. "Now that we know they're coming." 

"In three weeks. That's too long to wait in one place. We have to keep looking." 

What if he never finds Sydney? Jack finds himself remembering the gift of the rattle; he keeps imagining taking it back, as though by giving away the one thing he still kept safe for his daughter, he gave away her safety completely. 

His plane back to Los Angeles will leave at 4 a.m. Jack and Renee go to a hotel, and he pays for separate rooms. But he's not surprised or sorry when she walks into his room at midnight, wearing a T-shirt and a thong, as blasé as though they'd done this a hundred times before. 

He's too old to change types anyway. 

"You need to relax." She straddles him on the bed. "And so do I." 

Jack helps her peel away the T-shirt. She has a rangy body, thin and hard-muscled; if she finds him too old for her, she gives no sign. 

Afterward, as she sleeps by his side, he wonders if Renee knows that she sought a father figure to replace the one she destroyed. He wonders who he was trying to replace. Neither of them have room in their hearts for anyone new; but they fit neatly in the spaces left open by others who are lost.


	35. Irina with Rambaldi manuscripts, series finale spoilers

**"So Shall It Be"**

Irina does not work with the original manuscripts often, fragile and faded as they are. Besides, they contain hidden messages – codes within codes, visible only when exposed to liquid or fire, not unlike her old KGB ciphers in the margins of books Jack gave her as gifts. That makes them too fragile to be handled frequently. This is why, whenever she purchases, finds or steals a new Rambaldi manuscript, the first thing she does is create a copy. 

She does this herself. Nobody else can be trusted with the detail or the interpretation. Irina begins simply, laying thin paper across the top and creating delicate tracings. Her hands know the curve and slant of Rambaldi's handwriting by now, and several times she has seen her older daughter's face peering up at her, coming into being as Irina recreates Rambaldi's shadows. 

Not today, however. Today she is dealing with something far less inspiring – the impending apocalypse. 

Perhaps, Irina thinks, she should feel more enthusiasm. She is one of the agents of this tired world's destructions, one of the sparks that will light a cleansing fire to scour the earth and clear the way for something finer to emerge. It is her life's work. Her burden to know it and her honor to bring something else into being. 

_Like Sydney. Like Nadia._

She closes her eyes and wills back such soft feeling. 

Sydney will survive to see this brighter tomorrow – and, if Irina has interpreted Rambaldi correctly, her older daughter may yet become one of the architects of that new, better world. 

Nadia will not survive to see it. Irina knew that before Nadia was ever born. For every hour she has spent weeping for her younger daughter's loss, Irina has spent another trying to convince herself that it is better this way. At least her grief will remain abstract. It is not like missing someone whose habits she knows, whose voice she can recall at any moment, whose touch and scent she craves. 

_Like Sydney. Like Jack._

Jack will not survive. Irina has seen nothing about this in Rambaldi's works; given that he has spent his life in the very nexus of Rambaldi's most important prophecies, Jack is strangely absent from them. But Irina knows Jack will die. All the burnt-out, broken, bitter things of this world will perish, and – thanks, in part, to her – that is where Jack belongs. 

Of course, that's why she'll die too. It's one of the many reasons she keeps Jack at even more of a distance than his paranoia and position demand. They'll be together again someday. Someday soon. And forever. 

Irina knows that there is no heaven and no hell. There is an afterlife, because Rambaldi is clear on that point, but it is a kind of silence and sleep, no more. It is as welcoming to the sinner as to the saint, which Irina has always found a comfort. 

She remembers the way Jack used to spoon behind her in bed, and smiles.


	36. Season Five, Sydney forgives Jack

**"Unburdened"**

 

Sydney wiped her cheeks and took a deep, quavering breath. _By now I should be better at this,_ she thought. _Dad and I used to fight so often. Maybe I’m out of practice._

This fight had been short but ugly. While they worked together in the nursery, Sydney had mentioned that Sloane rarely asked after Nadia. Jack had abruptly asked if Sloane had commented on discontinuing Nadia’s life support. Sydney had castigated Jack for even saying such a thing. Jack had begun citing statistics about how rarely coma patients awakened after such a long period. Sydney had accused him of hating Nadia because she reminded him of her mother’s affair. He’d gone into “statue mode,” arms stiff at his sides, and coldly said that she couldn’t be reasoned with in this state. 

Cue storming out of her own apartment, crying and taking a long walk on the beach. 

_I shouldn’t have said that about him hating Nadia. I know better. But why must he be so cold?_

_He’s always like that when he doesn’t know what to say. You know that by now. So why do you lose it every single time?_

Sydney knew the answer. She’d always known it, really – but for the first time it presented itself to her not as a burden she had to bear, but something she could change. 

When she reached her home, Jack was putting on his coat. As usual, he didn’t acknowledge the argument. “The border is done,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Dad, wait.” 

His eyes met hers for only an instant. “It’s not my place to give opinions on Nadia’s condition.” 

“I shouldn’t have flown off the handle.” Stepping closer to him, Sydney said, “When I get upset with you, I blow everything out of proportion. I shouldn’t do that.” 

Jack hesitated only briefly. “You don’t owe me explanations, Sydney.” 

“No, I don’t, because you understand the reason. I’m still getting back at you for not being there when I was little – even though I know now that it wasn’t all your fault. That you were hurting as badly as I was. I know all that, but I still haven’t let go.”

“Don’t blame yourself. I failed you. We both know it.” 

“Just listen to me.” Sydney sighed. “I understand now that some of what went wrong, you couldn’t control. And the rest of it – where you could’ve done better, where you failed me – Dad, I forgive you.” 

An enormous weight she’d carried with her for years, so long it seemed part of herself, lifted and was gone. 

Jack said nothing at first, but then he looked down at the floor – almost but not quite hiding the fact that he was blinking fast. Sydney swallowed hard. “Dad –“

“Thank you.” He left, maybe to protect his pride, maybe to think. It wasn’t the embrace she would’ve preferred. But Jack did smile at her and say, “See you in the morning.” It was enough.


	37. Jack and Nadia are together; Syd and Vaughn are trying to deal

:

 

"They're making a mistake. You know it. I know it."

"Maybe so, yeah."

"There's no maybe about it, Vaughn! She's my sister. He's my father. What is psychologically healthy about that?" 

"No offense, but I'm not sure Jack's going to end up with anything psychologically healthy regardless." 

"... okay, but what about Nadia? Don't you think she'd be better off with someone her own age? SOmeone who isn't her mother's husband?"

"Well, yeah. Like Weiss." 

"Like Weiss. Exactly. They were happy together, I thought." 

"I would totally pick Weiss to go out with before Jack."

"When did this scenario turn into you dating Weiss?"

"I'm not sure."

"It's just so wrong. It's so weird. I keep thinking that it can't be real. That this is some incredibly strange hallucination -- like I'm being brainwashed or something, and sooner or later Dad's going to tell me he'll stop seeing Nadia if I just tell him where some Rambaldi artifact is." 

"I really hate that your scenario is completely plausible for our lives." 

"Will you quit joking around?" 

"Syd, what do you want me to do? Run over there with a pitchfork and a torch and try to work up a crazy mob? I don't think it's going to work. Not unless the Lakers won tonight. Then, maybe." 

"It's just -- so -- weird." 

"You know what's really interesting about this?" 

"The whole scenario is interesting in a Maury Povich kind of way." 

"The fact that you're freaked out --"

"That's NOT the weird part of this!"

"-- that you're freaked out, but you're not angry." 

"I'm angry."

"No, you're not. If you were angry, Syd, you'd be really quiet right now. Instead, you can't stop talking about it." 

"I'm a little angry. But -- I guess -- I know that whyever they're doing this, and I really _do not know_ why they're doing it -- but I know it's not to hurt me." 

"Do you think they're doing it to hurt your mother?" 

"Maybe. Ew. That's kind of sick." 

"You wouldn't think it was sick if I said they were doing it to hurt Sloane. I --- holy shit, you have the most evil grin on your face right now." 

"That's not why they're doing this. I mean, Nadia would never --"

"Not ever." 

"But oh, God, Vaughn, I wish she would." 

"Okay, at this point, I think you need to have a drink and think about something else for a while." 

"Make it a double." 

"I'd say you've earned it."


	38. post series finale, Jack is alive but has amnesia

**"One True Thing"**

 

"Have I been here before?" 

"No." The young man's eyes narrowed. "At least, not that I know of." 

Jack nodded, accepting this. He didn't trust his caretaker -- who had been nurse, and protector these past several months, but who clearly had an agenda Jack wasn't allowed to know. However, it stood to reason that some of what the young man said was true. Even if every word were a lie, Jack would still have to accept a few basic tenets to go on. 

Among the few statements he had accepted: 

* His name really was Jack. So far his last name had not been revealed. 

* His caretaker's name was probably Julian. This was surprising, because Jack would've expected that to be the most critical lie. However, Julian responded to that name every time, without hesitation, suggesting that it was either genuine or an alias he'd had for so long that it might as well have been true. 

* Julian was confident in his ability to control the situation with Jack, as they had remained in one location since he left the hospital in Mongolia. Prudence would have dictated frequent moves, but this was the first time they'd changed quarters. That meant that Julian was either confident or careless – but it only took one glimpse to reveal that he was never careless. 

* Julian meant to keep Jack alive. For what purpose, Jack still couldn't guess. All the same, if Julian had wanted Jack dead, he'd certainly have done away with him by now. 

"How long is this going to go on?" Jack asked, hoping for one more sliver of truth amid all the shadows. 

"What do you mean by this?" 

"My captivity." 

"How do you know you're a prisoner? I might be taking care of you for your own protection." 

"You? No." 

One corner of Julian's mouth twitched, but he didn't allow the smile. "There are people who would be quite happy to see you. And I intend to make them very happy someday soon. But first they will be in a position to make me happy." 

"I'm a hostage." 

"I prefer to think of you as an incentive." 

Jack tried to wonder to whom he could be incentive. He was older, and he strongly disliked being given orders – had he once been a person in a position of authority? Although he could remember nothing of his life before the moment he first opened his eyes in the hospital, Jack had realized that he could identify the make of each of the many guns he'd seen the guards carrying. He wore no wedding ring – was he single? Divorced? Widowed? (He was fairly sure he wasn't gay, although the only man he spent much time with was Julian, who was far too manipulative to inspire affection.) Did he have children?

Yes. He thought he had children. That idea resonated with Jack when almost nothing else did, so that that was one more thing in the world that was true.


	39. Jack and Nadia are together; Sloane finds out

**"Diplomat"**

 

“We need to have a discussion, Jack.” Sloane’s dark eyes locked with his. “About Nadia.” 

_He knows._

Jack had been prepared for this since long before he first touched Nadia. If he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have begun the affair in the first place. That didn’t make this moment any easier. 

Sloane would probably begin by accusing Jack of doing this to hurt someone – Nadia, Sydney or even Irina’s memory, but most likely Sloane himself. If only that were true. Jack’s motivations would have been simpler then; he could have looked Sloane in the eye and enjoyed his discomfiture. Instead, he felt only the slow burn of guilt. “Let’s talk.” 

Jack took his seat opposite Sloane’s desk. Sloane took a long sip of water, then steepled his hands in front of him. “I understand that you’re having an affair with my daughter.” 

“Yes.” 

“Unlike you, not to have a cover story, Jack.” 

“Just as it’s unlike you to force a confrontation. Unless you have a reason. I take it you do, so, get to it.” 

“You aren’t – defending yourself. Denying it.” 

“No.” 

To his astonishment, Sloane smiled. “Good, Jack. That’s good. If you’d started this conversation by denying your connection to Nadia, I could never have trusted another word you’d say. But now I know that she matters to you. You’ll stand by your relationship with her, even with her father calling you to task.” 

The conversation was taking an odd turn. “What are you calling me to task for? Nadia’s an adult. She’s capable of making her own choices.” 

“And I think she’s chosen well.” 

This could not be good. “I beg your pardon?” 

Sloane’s smile broadened. “Jack, I’m only calling you to task for not telling me from the beginning. You know how deeply I care for Nadia. How much I want to know about her life and her concerns. Why wouldn’t I want to know that she’s fallen in love?”

“You see no reason why Nadia and I wouldn’t – why most people would –“

“Object? Of course I see it. That’s why we have to be careful with Sydney. You can rely upon my discretion. Despite her intelligence and skills, Sydney’s outlook on most matters is rather, shall we say, conventional. You and I see these things more rationally.”

The first sword had been suspended over Jack’s head: If Sloane knew, he could tell Sydney. He would use that to control Jack’s behavior. Jack knew he could find a way out of that snare, but he also knew it would take a while. 

Sloane strolled from behind his desk to rest a friendly hand upon Jack’s shoulder. “Do we understand each other?” 

_You’ll blackmail me to get your way and get closer to your daughter through approval you don’t really feel. You’re as angry as I would be, but you’re smarter about it. Because you’re colder. You win this round._ “We understand each other perfectly.” 

“Good.” Sloane slapped his back. “Welcome to the family.”


	40. Marshall's Greatest Invention

**"The Gizmo"**

 

"Marshall wouldn't quit the video game company, would he?" Sydney felt a frisson of alarm. Marshall's gadgets had saved her life so often. 

Carrie shrugged. "If this product sells like I think it will – let's just say a day job might not be necessary."

"You're being so cryptic." Nadia poured Carrie more wine. "Come on, what is it?" 

"Well." Carrie glanced downward, then smiled wickedly. "We just call it the Gizmo. You wear it. Women wear it. During sex." 

Nadia and Sydney started to laugh. "I never realized Marshall's contraptions had an, um, erotic component," Sydney said. 

"That's not what you think about a guy like Marshall." Carrie reached into a box and pulled out a few silver-foil packets and tossed them at Sydney and Nadia. "But trust me, the power of invention trumps everything else. Give the Gizmo a try." 

"Is it a vibrator?" Nadia felt the packet curiously; a tangle of wires and elastic was inside. 

"Yes. And it uses electromagnetic waves. And this pulse-effect thing – oh, just TRY it." 

**

"We – have – to – stop," Vaughn panted, crawling toward the edge of the bed. But Sydney's hand gripped his arm, holding him fast. 

"This pulse thing – electrical thing – Oh, my God." Her hair was more rumpled than Vaughn had ever seen it, and earlier he would've sworn it was standing on end. "Let's go again." 

"Syd, it's been –" Vaughn tried to count the number of times on his fingers, but he was running out of fingers. And strength. And oxygen.

The crazy gleam in Sydney's eyes couldn't be denied. "Just once more." 

Vaughn didn't know whether to curse the Gizmo or bless it, but there was no denying – Marshall was a genius.

**

Director Chase glared at the three agents in her office. "Agent Bristow, you have a sprained knee. Agent Vaughn has been reported with dehydration, exhaustion and back trouble. Agent Santos has muscle strain. I'd ask Agent Weiss why he has health problems too, but unfortunately, he's in traction right now. Can anyone tell me why APO is suddenly a collection of the walking wounded?" 

They all shared guilty glances. Vaughn cleared his throat and edged toward the door. "I'll let Syd and Nadia explain." 

**

"Seriously?" Marshall had hoped for a raise, but this went beyond his expectations. "Wow. That's going to be a big push to Mitchell's MIT fund – not that he can't go to CalTech if he wants, because he can, but you know, awesome." 

"We want to keep you happy here," Director Chase said. "And regardless of how well your private-sector efforts pay off, your work is important to this agency. I thought your salary should reflect that." 

"I'd never leave the CIA, ma'am. Still, it's nice, great, fantastic, so – thanks!" 

After he had gone, Chase picked up the phone and dialed Dixon's number. "A dinner invitation?" he murmured, pleased. 

"You could say that." She held up one of the shiny foil packets and grinned. "Be sure to drink some Gatorade."


	41. so why are Sydney's disguises always so sexy?

**"Master of Disguises"**

When Sydney went undercover as a hooker in a high-class Shanghai brothel, Jack didn’t say a word. Not even when Marshall showed off the shoes he’d procured for Sydney to wear and referred to them as “you-know-what-me pumps.” 

Jack knew what. He didn’t like it, either. But he let his daughter do her job. 

When Sydney went undercover as a samba dancer during Brazil’s carnival, Jack didn’t say a word. Not even when he thought back to his one carnival mission and recalled that the costume of a samba dancer consisted of a feathered headdress, high heels and a sparkly thong. 

Jack made sure to tuck a tube of sunscreen into her op pack. 

But when Sydney went undercover as a lingerie model for a sleazy photographer, Jack had to draw the line. He didn’t break when Marshall happily asked Sydney, “So, baby-doll or teddy?” He didn’t break upon the first mention of the fishnet stocking. He didn’t even break at the godawful moment when he overheard his daughter on the phone making an appointment for a bikini wax. 

He broke about ten minutes after that, in an even more godawful moment, when he overheard Vaughn laughing softly in the door of Sydney’s office. “You get to keep the wardrobe for this one?” 

“Maybe.” She giggled. 

Jack’s blood pressure rose so sharply that he could feel his pulse at the top of his head. He stalked toward Sloane’s office, smiling slightly as he saw Marshall walking through the hallway too, going the opposite direction. “Hey, Mr. Bristow, what’s – gahhh!”

“Come with me.” The command was unnecessary, given that he had grabbed Marshall by the elbow and was now dragging him along, but Jack felt better for having said it. Papers scattered from the file folder Marshall had dropped fluttered in their wake. 

Sloane, a man not easily surprised, didn’t flinch when Jack towed Marshall into the office. He simply steepled his hands. “Is there a problem, Jack?” 

“The problem is that a top unit of undercover operatives is utterly incapable of thinking of a single disguise for my daughter that does not verge on the pornographic.” 

“There was that time in Egypt,” Marshall ventured weakly. “Remember, when she was the belly dancer – oh, uh, yeah.” 

“Jack, you understand the nature of our work.” Sloane shook his head, fond and exasperated. “We all do things we’d rather not do.” 

“And yet not one person in this room has ever gone undercover as a male stripper or homosexual prostitute.” 

Marshall looked from Jack to Sloane, then screwed his eyes shut. “And there’s the mental image that’s gonna scar me for life.” Then he gulped. “No offense, guys, ‘cause I’d look totally ridiculous too. Can you imagine, like, me in a Speedo? I’d think –“

“That will do, Marshall.” Sloane leaned back in his chair. “Jack, what are you saying?

“I’m saying that we work around such difficulties for ourselves. I think we can do so for Sydney.” 

Sloane shrugged, then nodded. “All right, Jack. For Sydney’s next op, you’ll be in charge of her cover. What form it takes, what she wears, it’s up to you.” 

_About time_ , Jack thought. 

**

The drug runner looked understandably surprised to have a visitor at his door, particularly this one. But he smiled hesitantly. “Can I help you?” 

“I’ve come to discuss a possible donation for the orphans.” Sydney smiled luminously. The wimple of her nun’s habit shielded her from the Nicaraguan sun. “Sister Mary Catherine, of the Evangeline convent.” 

He’d been a good Catholic schoolboy, once. So he let her right in.


	42. More Jack  & Nadia

**"Eve Stole the Apple"**

 

Jack can resist Nadia’s looks. 

She has the dark, strong features that have always captivated him – no wonder, as she inherited them from her mother, the first woman who bewitched Jack this way. Her hair is so black that it shines almost blue, and her delicate hands are soft to the touch (file folders, a brush pass on a mission, and only his imagination makes him think she lingers, surely). Her body has a true woman’s curves, slender though she is, because that thin waist sways into a full, perfectly shaped ass. Jack hadn’t ever particularly thought that a turn-on for him before, but apparently he is not too old to stop learning new things about himself. 

But all this he can resist. He’s known beautiful women before. 

Jack can resist Nadia’s youth. 

She has hope – as tangible as anything else about her, as soft in the air around her as her perfume. Her laughter rings out daily in the office, unabashed and honest as almost nothing else in APO is. There is a lightness to her movements that reminds Jack how it felt to be 25, reckless and carefree; that warmth flows into his blood again, stirring up embers and finding the possibility of fire. Nadia is not without scars (he is not so blind that he doesn’t see them), but she heals quickly. Her youth is like life itself, and Jack had not known how hungry he could still be for life. 

But that he can resist. Nadia’s not the only young woman in the world. 

Jack can resist Nadia’s danger. 

She is more dangerous to him than any other woman ever has been – yes, even more than Irina, who is lethal and cunning but who has nothing new to stab him with. When he tangled with Irina, he risked only opening up old wounds. But Nadia (child of Arvin, sister of Sydney, not his daughter and yet not _not_ his daughter) could tear him open in ways he’d never dreamt of before. She is forbidden to him by everyone he has ever truly loved. Despite that – no, because of it – she is the most tantalizing creature he has ever known. He thinks it’s like the mad exhilaration that sometimes claims people at great heights, teasing them to leap from a cliff into the void. Suicide and bliss, one and the same. 

But he can resist this too. Even Jack’s self-destructive tendencies have limits. 

Then one day he comes by the apartment, meaning merely to drop off a file for Sydney, who is not home. Nadia is there alone, and invites him in. He accepts. He thinks himself safe. He is only interested in seeing how far she will go. 

Nadia smiles and bubbles over with small talk. She peels an apple in one perfect spiral, then deftly cuts it up and innocently offers him a slice. It’s a small gesture, spontaneous and sweet, and as quickly as Adam was in Eden, Jack is lost.


	43. Nadia and Jack meet during Season One

**"Rain Check"**

Jack hasn’t taken a vacation in more than a decade – not since he became a double agent. He’s taken some vacation time, of course, the minimum the psych people at SD6 and the CIA will let him get away with, but he’s spent every second of that in Los Angeles, most of it in the confines of his own home. Silence and safety and the ability to check up on Sydney: That’s as much as Jack asks of time off anymore. 

But this proves to be only one of the many things that changes when Sydney joins him as a double. 

“Vaughn said you were going on vacation next week,” she says to him one day in the parking garage, instead of hello. 

“I’ll be around.” 

“Making sure I’m not checking up on you?” Sydney tries so hard to look fierce that it breaks Jack’s heart. 

“As much as we travel for work, I’d think you’d understand the appeal of staying home.” 

“As much as I’ve asked for space from you, I’d think you’d understand that, too.” 

He goes to his office afterward and calls a travel agent. Six nights, price no object, location irrelevant. Though the travel agent is understandably confused by this, he finally offers Buenos Aires. That will be fine. 

**

Jack rather likes Buenos Aires, and its steakhouses suit him very well. But he isn’t in LA looking after Sydney, who is in more trouble than she knows; he’s in hell every second that he doesn’t have her back. 

Still, he told her he was going. Coming back early would be viewed as suspicious. He’ll have to endure. 

On his third night in the city, on another trip to a steakhouse, he sees a young girl arguing with her boyfriend at a nearby table. Jack, an expert eavesdropper, hears that the boy now prefers another. The girl says he’s a coward to tell her in public; Jack silently agrees. The boy finally drops a few bills on the table and stalks off, humiliating the girl by leaving her alone. 

She sees Jack watching. He tries to smile sympathetically. To his astonishment, her response is to collect the money, plate and wineglass and move to his table. “Silly to eat alone,” she says in perfect English. 

Her name is Nadia. She reminds him of Sydney at times, of Irina at others; it’s uncanny, really. But her spirit is her own. Before long she is telling him funny stories about the city, her friends, all sorts of things. Jack is charmed despite himself. 

As they leave the restaurant, she says, lightly, “Would you like to come to my place for a nightcap?” 

“How old are you?” 

Nadia hesitates before confessing, “19.” 

Good Lord. Jack turns her down gently and insists on walking her home. At the door of her apartment building, she takes his hand and for one moment, he’s tempted. “Are you sure, Jack?” 

Thinking it only a joke, he says, “Call me when you’re 25.”


	44. In season one, Will Tippin writes a Vows column about Tom Grace and his bride to be

**"Vows"**

 

Pity the reporter who crosses Litvack. He who misses deadlines finds himself assigned to obits for a week. She who tries to expense an extra lunch will repent while editing wire copy about celebrities. And woe betide any soul who, having promised an in-depth investigation into the murder of one Daniel Hecht, then attempts to stall the story's publications. The punishment for such a crime is dire. 

"The Vows section," Will complains to Jenny. "Vows. Bridezillas talking about how fabulous their weddings are going to be." 

"Some people _like_ to make romantic commitments, you know." 

This comment is perhaps the only thing that could have propelled Will from his chair, out to meet the "happy couple." As he goes, he wonders if Jenny did that on purpose, but not for long. He never thinks about Jenny for long. 

So. The bride. She's cute, actually – average height, average weight and no-nonsense dark ponytail. A schoolteacher who loves her work: That's refreshing. Amanda seems a bit embarrassed about her wedding being featured in the newspaper, which is almost endearing. Will decides he likes her. 

The groom – him, Will's not so sure about. 

He's tall and dark, but there's no telling about the handsome, not with that wary look on his face all the time. Will tries to put him at ease. "I know a lot of people worry about reporters," he says. "That we're going to make them look bad. Trust me, that's so not what the Vows section is about." 

"I'm not worried." There's an edge to it, a suggestion that Will's delusional if he thinks a guy like Tom would worry about a guy like Will for any reason whatsoever. Or maybe Will's just projecting. Something about strong, silent types always makes him feel insecure. Less manly or something. Syd's dad has the exact same effect on him, which Will thinks is a weird thing to come to mind, but there it is. 

They go through the basics: How they met (college), Tom's job (State Department), a couple of anecdotes that Will might be able to use (there's a scuba-diving adventure that could work) and the wheres, whens and hows of the ceremony. The question about the honeymoon ought to be equally routine, but it isn't. 

"We're staying right here," Amanda says. "What better way to celebrate our marriage than by starting our married life, just the way we're going to live it?" 

"Seriously?" Will hasn't heard that one before. "Are you guys saving up for a trip later? I know a lot of couples do that." 

"Seriously," Tom says, emphasis on _serious_. "The truth is, I travel a lot for work. My idea of a dream vacation is staying at home. So Amanda suggested honeymooning at home, which is perfect." He hugs his fiancée around the shoulders at that, and she smiles. Will decides he likes the guy a little better for that. 

The story is filed on time, and Will is off the hook with Litvack – for now.


	45. Jack is the World's Worst Matchmaker

**"Matchmaker, Matchmaker"**

 

"Thanks again for doing this." Sydney stands on the floor of the nursery, watching her father stand on a stepladder as he gravely applies a wallpaper border of dancing bears. 

"It's no problem." He smoothes the last corner with the kind of satisfaction he usually reserves for terminating enemy operatives, then glances down at her as if to speak. But his expression shifts into concern. "What's wrong?" 

"It's just – this is the kind of thing Vaughn would've done, if he were here." 

Jack puts one hand on her shoulder, and they are close enough now that Sydney understands what he means. He's praising her for using the correct verb tense, for speaking as though Vaughn were dead even though they're alone together. Constant caution: Her father's teachings have sunk in at last. Sydney wonders if she ought to feel more proud or chagrined. 

Jack says only, "He would've been a good father." 

It's high praise for Vaughn, which improves Sydney's mood enough to tease a bit. "You would've picked out someone else for me, though." 

"As if you ever asked my opinion." 

"I'm going to guess." Sydney folds her hands over her belly as Jack carefully descends from the ladder. "I think you were really hoping I'd end up with – Will." 

"Tippin?" 

"Admit it." 

"I liked Will, but he wasn't – no." 

"You were going to say 'he wasn't the one,' weren't you?" Sydney tidies up the glue and tools as she starts to grin. "Which means there _was_ somebody you wanted me to end up with." 

Jack wants to protest, she can tell, but he doesn't. Folding the ladder shut, he finally says, "It's natural for a father to wonder about these things." 

"Who? Come on, tell me." 

"Don't pretend you don't know. I hinted about it often enough." 

"You never hinted about anyone! Okay, now you have to tell me." 

"Dixon, of course." 

"Dixon?" It's not an absurd suggestion; Dixon's handsome, intelligent, trustworthy and kind. He always defends her and looks out for her, and she can see why the idea of a match would appeal to her father. But still – "We're just friends." 

"Relationships do change." 

Sydney thinks Jack is oblivious to the sweetness of his saying that while they work together to decorate her baby's nursery. "Yeah, they do. But – hinting? When were you hinting?" 

"You know." She doesn't. He impatiently tries to explain. "After you returned from the Covenant. While Vaughn was married to Lauren." 

"What kind of hints?" 

"I sent you to his office to pick up op reports. You were tasked with calling him when I could have done so myself."

"That's your idea of hinting?" Sydney starts to laugh. "Seriously?" 

Jack looks crestfallen. Sydney can only laugh harder, until there are tears in her eyes – but they're happy tears for the first time in too long, and before long, Jack is smiling too. "Apparently I'm not much of a matchmaker." 

"Nope." Syd wipes at her cheeks. "Don't give up your day job."

"Unlikely."


	46. Rachel Gibson encounters Season One Sydney

**"Pros and Cons"**

 

Rachel Gibson had been a methodical girl ever since kindergarten, when she insisted on putting her crayons back in the box in the same order they had been in when the box was new. She’d turned this trait to more productive purposes as she got older, becoming a perfectionist when it came to schoolwork and extracurriculars, as well as a maker of lists. College wouldn’t change that, she figured; in fact, right now she was compiling a list that might determine exactly which college she’d attend. 

Berkeley’s cons list had been far longer than its pros; so, too, had Duke’s. But UCLA looked better all the time. During a free hour during her “Pro-Stud” weekend, this particular prospective student sat in the quad, soaking up atmosphere and studying both lists with satisfaction. 

_CONS_

_Far from home_  
Not prestigious  
LA sort of sucks  
LA traffic really sucks 

_PROS_

_Far from home_  
Still really good school   
Prime recruiting territory for Silicon Valley  
Surfing  
Awesome dorms  
Chance to see celebrities 

That last one wasn’t exactly important, Rachel thought, but she knew what she liked. 

As she unfolded her schedule for the afternoon’s activities (mixer, lecture, mixer), Rachel glanced up to see two women taking seats at a picnic bench not far away. The one with a dark-brown bob looked for a second like Rachel’s host student, and she started to say hello, but then she realized that it was somebody else. Embarrassed, she stared down at her schedule again – but now she was eavesdropping despite herself. 

“Seriously, you are pushing yourself too hard. Way too hard.” 

“Francie, I know there’s a lot on my plate. I put it all there myself. But I can’t stop now.” 

“Can’t or won’t? Your job is running you ragged, and this coursework – I mean, how many books do you have to read this week? How many papers do you have to write this month?” 

“I can’t quit my job,” said the girl with the dark-brown bob to her friend, an African-American girl who looked unconvinced. “The only option I have to change things is quitting school, and I won’t do that.” 

“Well, I don’t know why you’re so into the bank – except the part where it buys your food and pays the rent and stuff.” 

“Funny how that works.” There was something odd about her tone of voice there, like money wasn’t her rationale at all, but she didn’t elaborate. 

“But you don’t look good, honey. You look tired all the time, and given everything that’s happened – I think you need a break.” 

“You’re probably right. It’s just not going to happen anytime soon.” Sighing, the girl turned back to her studies. 

Rachel took out a pen and wrote, on the CONS list: _Insane workload._ That made the list look more than one line longer, and it put the celebrity-spotting thing in perspective. 

In the end, Rachel decided to attend another college. No point in walking down the same road as that poor tired girl.


	47. Jack and Nadia have a baby

**"Resemblance"**

 

They have a baby because Nadia wants one so badly, and because Jack can no longer endure the shadow in her eyes while she cuddles Isabelle. He doesn't feel the need for another child; worse, the thought of failing as a father again makes him slightly sick. But he made Nadia a promise. Jack takes his promises seriously.

When he gently asks Nadia if the time has come for them to try, her eyes light up. So Jack tells himself it is worth it. With Nadia and Sydney and Vaughn to help, he'll handle things better this time. Naturally, he'll love the child, but privately Jack thinks he couldn't love it as much as he loves Sydney. That doesn't seem likely or even possible. But he thinks he'll be able to disguise the fact. 

He goes right on believing that until the moment Nadia first places newborn Maria in his arms. The baby's unfocused eyes blink in confusion, and it happens, again – the sudden overwhelming rush of gratitude, responsibility and awe. Jack belongs to Maria instantly, just as he did to Sydney all those years ago.

No, it's not the same. He's not the same man. But the love is no less powerful. 

Maria turns out to be an "easy baby" – easily soothed, seldom startled and inclined to sleep through the night once she's a couple months old. Jack didn't know there were easy ones. Sydney was anything but. At any rate, he's relieved. Memories long pushed aside return to help him: the way to balance a baby's head during her first bath, the strange workings of car seats, even how to clip toenails smaller than a pencil eraser. He can handle this. Of course, this is the easy part, but Jack's glad to be off to a good start. 

To their mutual surprise, Jack makes the transition more easily than Nadia, for whom it's rocky going, at first. Nadia wasn't raised by a mother. She judges herself by movies, stories and other illusions, and blames herself too harshly for every accident. At night, leaning on Jack's shoulder, she confesses that she feels as if she's faking it. Whenever he tries to explain the fallacy in her thinking, she gets angry, so Jack quickly learns to shut up and rub her back until she feels better. 

When Nadia returns to active duty, Jack retires from the field, for good. He still works for the CIA, but he never travels farther than his desk; some days he works from home. Isabelle and Maria are cared for by the same nanny, and Jack is the only one of the four parents the girls see every single day. Probably he is the least ideal companion for them, but they don't seem to have noticed yet. 

"You must miss it," Sydney says once. "Being out there." 

"I don't." Jack knows Sydney doesn't believe him, but it's true. That part of his life was ending anyway. And he's probably the world's only person looking after two children under the age of three who finds it less exhausting than what he was doing before. And now his analytical personality is primarily focused on the girls – determining who they are, what they will be. 

They'll both be fine candidates for Project Christmas. Jack determined that for each of them before they were six months old. He senses it would be best to wait until they're older before he raises that subject with their mothers. 

Besides, there are other questions to answer, such as the simple but fascinating issue of who it is they take after. 

With Isabelle, it's not that hard. Isabelle is the image of Sydney, save for Vaughn's eyes. The likeness to Sydney is also, to some extent, the likeness of Irina, but that doesn't strike Jack that often. It's Sydney he remembers as a giggly, chubby-cheeked little girl, toddling across the carpet toward him. So that's who he sees in Isabelle. 

Maria – she's more difficult. 

Of course Jack sees her mother in her. Maria inherited Nadia's dark eyes and hair, and he thinks the resemblance between them will increase in time. From him, she has her curls and, unfortunately, the ears. ( _"The most dominant genes in the world," Sydney says, pointing at Isabelle, whose ears are only slightly less pronounced. "I swear to God."_ ) But there's something else about her, something elusive, that Jack can't quite identify. Maybe it's only the usual alchemy of babies, the part of Maria that makes her individual. 

And yet it is so familiar. 

Finally, when she reaches a year and a half, Jack gets it. 

They are playing a game, of sorts. This game consists of Jack attempting to go about his business at his desk while Maria, still unsteady on her feet, toddles up to him and tries to tug something to the floor – the tape dispenser, or a pen. The game in it is Jack's studied pretense that he doesn't see her, and Maria's laughter when he always stops her at the very last moment. Precisely why this is humorous, Jack couldn't begin to guess, but Maria likes it, so they carry on this way for several minutes. 

Then she toddles in again, but instead of going for the desk, Maria holds her arms out for a hug. Jack picks her up and settles her in his lap. "You must be getting tired. You like to cuddle when it's time for you to nap." Jack's not one for baby talk. 

Maria sweeps across his desk with both hands, knocking absolutely everything to the floor in a flurry of pages and paper clips, and laughs delightedly. 

Jack realizes he's been played about two seconds before he realizes that, in many ways, his daughter takes after her grandfather, Arvin Sloane. 

He doesn't feel dismayed at all. Instead he remembers Arvin as he was when they first met ( _"truly friends," Irina's memory whispers in his ear_ ), and feels an overwhelming sense of gratitude that this, at least, lives on.


	48. Will Tippin visits his sister post-witness protection

**"The First Five Years"**

 

Will makes this trip twice a year. He takes some vacation days, tells the guys at the site that he's going camping in the woods with some buddies that he hasn't seen in a while. 

Then he drives to a campground lot, parks his car and waits. At the appointed hour (on the minute, always), a gray sedan pulls in, and its driver pretends to ask Will for directions. They converse for a few seconds about whatever, and then Will gets into the car. This car drives him to a dull-looking office building in the middle of nowhere. 

He rides the elevator up several stories and is ushered into a small room. That's where Amy is. 

_Will_ , she always cries, and the sound of his true name in her familiar voice crashes into him – like a stone hurled through glass. He's crying even before she hugs him; she's crying before he even gets there. They're left alone for a couple of hours, which they spend hugging and babbling about their lives. It ends too quickly. For days afterward, Will feels heartbroken, and a small voice inside him asks if he wouldn't rather just forget Will Tippin and live as Jonah forevermore. 

He thinks he could forget Will Tippin – scary but true. But he can't forget Amy. His baby sister is his baby sister, period, no matter what name he pretends to own. 

The meetings go on like this for the first few years, always the same. The only thing that changes is the color of Amy's hair, which shifts from Crayola red to lemon yellow to jet black and back again. 

Then the meeting changes. 

"Will," Amy says. She doesn't run to hug him, and she isn't crying. Her hair is sandy blonde, which looks weird to him until he remembers it's her natural color. "Hey." 

"Hey." Will hugs her, a bit gingerly. She hugs back, but her hands only rest on his shoulders for a few seconds. "How are you? You okay?" 

"Yeah, I –" Amy stops. "No, I'm not okay." 

"What's wrong?" 

"It's been five years without any answers. That's what's wrong." 

Will thought they'd gotten past this long ago, during those last terrible days in L.A. "You know I can't tell you." 

"Can't or won't?" 

" _Can't._ Jesus, Amy, did you not notice all the guys with dark suits in this place? Those bulges in their jackets aren't their wallets." 

"I know it involves the government. I know you didn't just run off because you wanted to." 

"Okay, then." 

"No, it's not okay. Will, doesn't this ever end? Doesn't it have to change someday? This can't be forever." 

"I don't know how long it lasts." Once he'd thought he wouldn't be able to take six months of it. "It might be forever." 

"I hate this." Her eyes fill with tears. For the first time, Will realizes she, too, asks if she wouldn't rather forget, and he feels farther away from her now than he ever did as Jonah.


	49. for challenge "weird pairings" - Jack dates Will's editor

They meet at the dry cleaner's. Well, at what used to be the dry cleaner's. 

"What the hell happened?" Litvack says, staring at the still-smoldering hulk of a building that no doubt contains the still-smoldering remains of her favorite slacks. 

She doesn't say it to anyone in particular, but somebody answers. "From the looks of things, it was probably a fault in the gas line," says a man about her age, tall and gray-haired. He's wearing a trenchcoat and suit; like Litvack, he has his car keys in his hand and a dismayed look on his face. "If you still have your ticket, the liability limits are printed on the back. In very small type." 

"If I still had the ticket, I'd be wearing it until my next trip to the mall." 

The corner of his mouth lifts – not quite a smile. Litvack likes a challenge; she also decides she likes his face. "Looks like our errands for the day have been canceled. Want to grab some coffee instead?" He gives her a glance that says, _Who, me?_ and she looks back like, _Yeah, you._

Litvack is surprised to have asked him out, but not as surprised as he seems to be to accept. 

His name turns out to be Jack Bristow. A widower for almost 30 years, who says that between a demanding job (he's a banker) and single fatherhood, he really hasn't had time to consider remarriage. His daughter seems to be the center of his world – he brags about her quite a bit, though curiously he never mentions her name – so Litvack supposes she'll buy that explanation. 

She tells him that she was once a journalist, that she took an early retirement payout a few years ago and that she now splits her time between freelancing and teaching at Loyola. She tells him that her son manages a golf course in Hawaii and her daughter's a photographer in New York, which means a working voice mail service is the center or her world. 

Unlike most men (at least, based on the dregs she's been meeting lately), he lets her do most of the talking. Jack is a careful listener, and his questions are thoughtful. "You should've been a reporter," Litvack tells him, long after the coffee cups are empty. "You know how to keep yourself out of the story." 

"I work at it." He smiles – a real smile this time – and Litvack knows this one is going to be interesting. 

They start seeing each other. His apartment is sort of personality-deficient, but the cat surprises her, as does the tenderness with which Jack cares for it. He doesn't care for live music, but he'll go see old movies at the vintage house or go out to eat anywhere. Best of all, he fucks like he means it, like it's important and amazing every single time. Litvack hasn't had that in a while. 

She knows she's got it bad when he calls her June and she lets him.


	50. Jack breaks up with Will's editor

**"Too Much, Too Late"**

 

Jack has jumped out of airplanes into enemy territory with less trepidation than he says this: "I was thinking of bringing someone over tomorrow. For dinner." 

Sydney stares. Like any good spy, she distrusts deviations in routine. "You want to bring a – friend?" 

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble. Or we could go out." 

Slowly, Sydney says, "You mean, a woman friend." 

Jack lets silence serve as his assent. 

A small smile tugs at the corner of Sydney's mouth. He can't tell if she's happy for him or amused by him. "How long has this been going on?" 

"A few months." 

"What's her name?" 

"June." 

"You act like I'm interrogating you." 

"You are." 

She folds her arms across her chest, so that they rest on her pregnant belly. "Is it serious?" 

"I just think you should meet. That's all." Jack knows that his current relationship is mostly casual; he admires June greatly, but there's no question of telling her the truth about himself. Still, he's enjoying himself – feeling settled, sort of, what with having a normal romantic life, a stable working environment and a good relationship with Sydney for the first time in almost thirty years. So he's willing to risk tying it all together with this introduction. Jack simply hopes Sydney doesn't read too much into it. 

"I'll make some pasta," Sydney says. "If you think June would like that." 

Relieved, Jack nods. 

**

Dinner goes well, at first. 

June brings flowers; Sydney welcomes her with a one-armed hug. Jack can tell Sydney's relieved that June is the right age, that she's dressed tastefully and that she has a spry sense of humor. He can also tell that June is surprised and charmed by Sydney's beauty and easy warmth. Her admiration for his daughter makes him even fonder of her, and he squeezes June's hand once under the table. 

In return he gets the _Wait 'til we get home, you dog_ look. Jack likes this look. 

The women keep the conversation lively, so Jack mostly gets to enjoy watching them. At one point, Sydney tells an anecdote about a mix-up at the pharmacy that somehow resulted in her being given clearly unnecessary fertility drugs instead of her prenatal vitamins. Laughing, she says, "So I go up to the counter, and I say, no, no, I'm _Sydney Bristow_ –" 

"Sydney Bristow?" June's head snaps up. Jack tenses. "Wait, wait – weren't you a friend of Will Tippin's?" 

"I – yeah." Sydney tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, to cover her nervousness. "You knew Will?" 

"I used to be his editor. Until he started to think the intelligence community was after him." 

"June _Litvack_ ," Sydney says. She gives Jack a look that means, _Did you know this?_ He didn't. He doesn't have a Project Christmas-enhanced memory and he never, ever guessed the connection. _This_ was the woman pressing for the story Jack tried so hard to suppress; this is the woman he worked so hard to fool. 

The silence lasts a few seconds too long. June finally says, "Whatever became of Will?" 

"He's doing so much better. He got himself cleaned up, moved out of California to kind of start over – we haven't talked in a while, but I think he's doing great." 

"Glad to hear it." 

Sydney changes the subject. 

**

On the way home, Jack doesn't know what to say to June to explain what he's about to have to do. But she does it for him. 

"I once interviewed a top financier," she said. "The kind of guy who invests in what they call 'emerging markets.' Volatile countries, new economies, that kind of thing. He told me that they recruited people who wanted to travel widely, who could learn different languages quickly and who thought fast. That meant they were always competing for the same recruits as the CIA. Bankers and CIA agents – the same group of people. Who would guess? But it's true." 

"I don't think we can have this conversation." 

"Didn't think so." June's dark eyes are sad. He's never seen her sad before, and it occurs to him how unusual that is, in his life. "Jack – you're the most fun I've had in a decade. But after two divorces and 30 years in the newspaper, high drama is not what I'm looking for." 

"Didn't think so," he repeats. 

He drives her home for the last time. At her door, they hold hands for a long moment. 

"Just tell me one thing," June says. Jack braces himself for searing personal questions, a plea for a last chance, anything at all except what she does ask: "Will – he's really all right?" 

"Yes. And he always was." 

"If you ever get the chance, tell him I'm sorry." 

Jack nods. For a few seconds after June shuts her door and turns off the porch light, he stands on the step, adjusting to the dark before he heads home alone.


	51. Emily and Arvin begin their greatest gambit against SD6

**"Treasure"**

 

“It’s begun,” Emily says. 

Arvin nods and tries to smile for her. “This is how it works. Right on schedule.” 

“If you’re trying to reassure me, don’t.” He expects her to tell him that he got them into this mess, which is true, and that comforting her is really just a matter of comforting himself, also true. Instead, Emily takes a deep breath. “I don’t need it, Arvin. I understand.” 

What a woman she is. What a wife. Sloane knows he is a fortunate man in many respects, but Emily will always be his treasure. He envisions her as one of Rambaldi’s finest and most delicate creations – her eyes bright as diamonds in a jeweler’s simple setting, clockwork elegance in the pattern of the golden curls she had once and will again. 

Emily flinches. The process is not without pain. Arvin takes her hand (still so thin, so fragile, there is risk in this) and helps her to the nearby sofa. Their dinner remains unfinished on the table. He’ll have to remember to rinse her empty wineglass after the night’s business is complete. Carefully he settles her on the sofa; he’d like to sit with her, perhaps cradle her head in his lap, but he doesn’t dare risk it. There will need to be witnesses, people to see where she lies; every detail must be right, even her posture. 

It’s all right. There are other ways to comfort her. 

He kneels beside the sofa and strokes her hand gently between both of his. Her skin is still bruised from the IVs. Emily whispers, “We’ve never been apart more than two weeks. And the last time it was even two weeks – oh, Arvin, it must have been more than a decade ago.“

“It’ll be over before you know it.” 

A grimace contorts her lovely features, and she starts to shiver. Tears prick at Arvin’s eyes. He got them into this mess. 

He will get them out of it, too. All his scheming, all his plans – maybe it was merely practice, a way of preparing for this one moment when he can save her. If so, then all of it has been worthwhile. That isn’t a question Arvin will ever have to ask himself again. 

“Arvin?” Emily’s voice is tremulous with pain – and with uncertainty, too. Is her faith failing her now? At this moment, she could hardly be blamed. “Arvin, couldn’t we – oh, hold on to me –“

“It’s all right, my love. Everything’s going to be made right again.” 

She whispers, “Couldn’t we tell Sydney the truth? This will hurt her – so much –“ 

Sydney loves Emily as a mother. Arvin feels a wave of empathy for the girl, and love, knowing that she values what he values. They are closer than Sydney will ever know. 

“This has to be our secret.” He accepted the necessity of hurting Sydney Bristow long ago. 

Emily closes her eyes, giving in. Arvin weeps as though she is truly gone.


	52. Jack & Sloane Caught In A Bad Romance

**"Keepsake"**

 

Jack really isn’t sure why he’s doing this. 

Not helping lead the caravan: He does that because there’s nothing else to do, because even if their information is bad and no safe haven awaits them past the Rockies he thinks it can’t be any worse than it was back in LA. 

Not keeping Sydney at a distance: He does that out of habit when things get their worst. Jack knows it’s weak of him, but in a strange way, he thinks that both he and Sydney have come to rely on this wall between them; sometimes that’s all they have to lean on. When they’re hurting each other, pissing each other off, they don’t notice their hunger or the ash-mottled sky. 

Not even letting Sloane slowly take charge of the group: He does that because Sloane’s the best man for the job. Although Jack respects his own abilities, the times call for a kind of ruthlessness even Jack doesn’t possess, not even now. Sloane does. 

No, Jack isn’t sure why, every night, after their travels are over, he and Sloane have fallen into the habit of screwing each other’s brains out. 

Jack’s straight. He always wondered if Arvin’s interests in this regard weren’t broader than his own, but he’d never remotely suspected himself to be the subject of that interest. Then again, when has he ever been able to read Arvin’s impenetrable mind? 

In some ways, it is a relief at last not to have to question that mind, to ignore it entirely and concentrate only on the body. That, Jack can understand. That responds in ways that do not lie. Perhaps this is the only time and the only way that Jack’s ever really felt he had power over Sloane. If so, it’s a crude kind of reckoning. 

Jack will take it. He’s not above being crude. 

“Don’t.” Sloane’s voice is ragged; his beard-stubbled cheek scrapes against Jack’s naked shoulder. The word is meaningless. He’s not telling Jack to stop. 

Jack doesn’t stop. He doesn’t think. He feels. A kiss is like any other kiss. A mouth like any other mouth. The hand on his cock knows how to stroke, how to grasp, how to hold him back from coming until Jack thinks he’ll die of it and then set him instantly, wonderfully, free. 

“Yes.” Sloane’s voice is always roughest at the very end. Jack never says anything. 

One night, after they’re finished, Sloane says, “Is it because I’m all you have left, of your life from before? Or because you need something completely unfamiliar? Ironic, if I’m your means of starting over.” 

Sometimes Jack kisses him just to shut him up. 

If Sydney knew, she’d swallow her tongue. Jack doesn’t intend for her to know. That’s the one area where Sloane could still push too far – but probably it won’t come to that. Probably. 

They sleep curled against one another like teenagers, probably because neither of them trusts the other not to slip away in the night.


	53. Jack/Nadia UST

**"Fit to Be Tied"**

The problem, Jack thought determinedly, was not that Nadia Santos was taking off her clothing. It was that he noticed. 

All the operatives of APO had stripped down in each other's presence several times – the need was inevitable, given how many times they all had to switch disguises in small spaces and on short notice. Nobody ever complained. Sydney had made some token protest the first time the two of them had to do this, but her insistence that he not look had been silenced with Jack's pointed reference to changing her diapers. For his own part, Jack had long ceased to take any note whatsoever of these occasions. His own nudity could not embarrass him, nor did anyone else's interest him. 

He had thought Irina Derevko the last remaining exception to this rule, but apparently he was wrong. 

Nadia had shimmied out of the tangerine-and-gold sari without so much as a word, and then she stood in front of him in a strapless bra and thong so thin as to be transparent. A few inches of nude-colored spandex: Apparently that was all it took to destroy Jack's hard-won indifference and turn it into – something else, something that made his palms warm, his conversation awkward and his eyes fix determinedly on the puddle of shimmery orange cloth upon the floor. 

"Jack?" Nadia sounded amused. "Are you embarrassed?" 

"Somewhat." It was better to put it that way. 

"I would've thought this kind of thing was – old news, to someone like you." 

"You're a friend's daughter." 

"Ah. So that's it." Her tone suggested that she thought it might be something else entirely. 

Nadia shook her hair loose and grabbed her gown for the embassy reception. "The necklace Marshall designed –" 

"In your clutch bag," Jack said. He had placed it there ahead of time to avoid any need to slip it around her neck and bring their faces were too close together. 

She stepped into something long and soft, made of black lace, and Jack relaxed, thinking the moment had passed – but no, that was only her skirt. Nadia's smile was teasing as she held out something else to him. "It's a corset top," she said. "Lace me up?" 

_Damn._

Jack helped her adjust the top (low enough to reveal the curve of her breasts, high enough to taper at her waist but expose the swell of her hips), then started work with the laces. They were silky between his fingers, so slender as to be almost insubstantial, but they had strength. Every time he tugged, pulling the corset tighter, Nadia drew in her breath sharply. 

At least, he assumed the ties were the reason why. 

When she was finally dressed, Jack reviewed the data with her, gave her a cellphone that could double as a taser and said, "That should take care of everything." 

"Almost everything." Nadia gave him a melting glance over one shoulder as she went to the door. "Afterwards, you'll have to help me out of this dress."


	54. Sydney runs into Charlie during season five

**"Since You've Been Gone"**

 

"Sydney Bristow." 

Sydney, who had been reading the ingredients on the back of a jar of baby food, lifted her head slowly. She knew whose voice she had heard, though she hadn't heard it in years, but she couldn't quite believe it. "Charlie?" 

Charlie stood behind his shopping cart, which contained baby food and diapers. A flat platinum band shone on his left hand. "Long time." 

"Yeah." Sydney had once sworn to kick Charlie in the groin if she ever encountered him again, a promise she could have kept with a vengeance. But the man standing in front of her now was six years older, a little thicker around the middle and so obviously humbled to see Sydney that she couldn't muster any anger. "How – how have you been?" 

"All right. Good, these days. Took a while." Charlie glanced into some unseen distance, pursed his lips, then turned back to Syd. "I ended up moving to Colorado for a while. Got my head together. Went into therapy. I figured – you know, if I could mess up anything as good as what I had with Francie, I figured I needed some help." 

"Um, yeah." Sydney could smile at him now. She motioned to the cart. "I see the commitment thing is going better for you these days." 

"Definitely. Met Tamara in Denver. She's an optometrist. Great sense of humor – you'd like her. Keeps me in line, I can tell you that." 

"And the baby wipes are for –"

"Kevin. Three months old. Which means your applesauce is for –"

"Isabelle. Five months old." 

Charlie smiled so genuinely that Sydney felt the last of her resentment evaporate. If it were Francie standing here – happy and settled, with her own child and a man who loved her – Sydney felt certain that Francie, too, would have wished Charlie well. Yeah, he'd screwed up. But at least he seemed to have learned from it and grown up afterward. Sydney and Charlie had shared enough good times for her to be glad that he'd become the better man they'd all recognized in him, rather than the dog he'd been to Francie. 

"So, I realize it's a little awkward, but maybe sometime we could touch base. Tamara loves to cook – you could come by. Bring the baby. Drink a little wine, like old times." 

Slowly, Sydney nodded. "You know, that would be great." It would be good to revisit some of her memories of that time; often it felt like so long ago. 

"Fantastic." Charlie produced a business card; apparently he'd ended up in law after all. Sydney decided she'd ask him about that later. "Call me here. And – Sydney –"

"Yeah?"

"I know I've got no right to ask, but I'd like to know – Francie – is she doing okay? Is she happy?" 

She had never imagined that he didn't know.

"Syd?" 

"Oh, Charlie," she began, but then there seemed to be no more words. Sydney hadn't realized, until that second, how long Francie had been gone.


	55. Will winds up raising Isabelle

**"Your Funny Uncle"**

 

“Can you say Uncle Will? Give it a try. Un-cle-Will.”

Isabelle giggles and hides her face behind her chubby fists. That’s okay. She says only a few words so far, and Will’s expectations are low. 

She doesn’t yet say mama or dada. Isabelle doesn’t know what they mean. 

(“There’s not much time.” Sydney’s face had been stark and drawn, her body shaking with tension. Vaughn stood nearby, eyes dark. “You have to promise.”)

He lives under the name William Carrow, in a middle-class area of Vancouver. If anyone asks, he says he’s a ghostwriter for celebrity biographies – which ones? Oh, he signed nondisclosure agreements, but man, if he hadn’t, the stories he could tell! Everyone loves this alibi, especially its secrecy, and so Will has high hopes of hanging on to his latest identity for a while. 

In this one, Isabelle is his sister’s child. His late sister. _Car accident,_ he says, pursing his lips together and looking downward. People always apologize, and then they don’t ask any more questions. 

(“Why me?”

“You’re the one they won’t come looking for.” 

“They came for me before, Syd!”

“But they won’t suspect that you have Isabelle. Not at first, and that gives you time to get away.”)

The first two times Will took on new personas, they were the personas of a married man. His wife wanted to understand; she wanted to do the right thing. She’d taken the revelation about “Jonah” so bravely and wisely that Will had loved her as never before. Though they hadn’t been planning on starting a family for a while yet, she had enjoyed looking after Isabelle. At first, she said it was kind of fun. 

Seven months and three moves later, it wasn’t fun any longer. She didn’t leave him because the thrill was gone – nothing so cheap. She left him after the third time somebody shot through her car windows. Will remembers the glitter of broken glass in her tangled hair, the gleam of tears in her eyes. I can’t, she kept repeating. I can’t. 

She never made her demand out loud, but Will knew what it was: _Me or this baby._ By rights, he ought to have chosen his wife. 

But what would have become of Isabelle then? Will didn’t know, and not knowing, there was only one choice he could make. 

(“When will you come back?” 

“When it’s safe.” 

“A week? A month?” 

“Will –“

“A year? Shit, Syd, are you ever –“

“I don’t know.”) 

Will watches Isabelle playing on the floor, pushing brightly colored balls through a sort of plastic maze. They jingle as they roll, and she laughs. By this time, Will loves her as deeply as he could ever love a daughter of his own. But even that isn’t why this is worth it, to him. 

He looks at the night-dark window, imagines the world beyond it and wonders where Sydney might be. Wherever she is, she trusts him to do this right, and he will.


	56. Jack wonders what the hell Sloane's problem is anyway

**"Gold for Tin"**

Jack seldom asks himself anything about Arvin Sloane's motivations. 

His goals, yes. Jack would very much like to understand Sloane's goals. Primarily this is because he would like to thwart those goals; far less frequently, it's because he suspects they're on the same page and could help one another, if only either of them could bring himself to admit it. 

But motivations are irrelevant. That kind of understanding is a luxury Jack will never be able to enjoy. He ponders that kind of question only in a few spare moments – on a long, dull flight back home, perhaps, or in the few minutes he sits with his coffee at home in the mornings. 

Why? Why Sydney, why Irina, why APO, why the Alliance, why any of it. Jack has followed the long, slow disintegration of Arvin's life from one of duty, honor and happiness to one that is bitter, criminal and lonely. The decline was neither sharp nor even, but it was chosen. Deliberate. Exacted from a fate that all along had seemed to promise Arvin Sloane better things. That's the part of it Jack never understands – the fact that Sloane's depthless ambition and superior cunning is used, over and over again, to trade gold for tin. 

(Of course, Jack has watched his own life fade, and even more sharply, but the darkest tarnishes for him are tragedies he didn't choose. This experience makes it all the harder for him to understand Sloane's choices.)

What makes a man give up happy fidelity with a woman as lovely and loving as Emily for adultery with his best friend's wife? What makes a man reject adoption and the attending joys and pains of fatherhood for a kind of parasitic interest in his best friend's daughter? What makes a man look at his best friend and decide that he'd serve the master plan better as a pawn? Jack doesn't have to ask what made Sloane disillusioned with the CIA – that much he both knows and understands – but he never comprehended why the vile activities of the Alliance seemed palatable by comparison. 

These are merely academic questions now. Sloane has been given second and third chances, and now he has fled into the keeping of Prophet Five, clutching his tin and never looking back at lost gold. Nadia lies in her grave. Sydney is singing to Isabelle in the next room, putting his granddaughter to bed, while Jack rinses dishes in her kitchen. The liquid soap smells like oranges. 

If Jack had the chance – if he could ask his old friend one more question, and be certain for once of an honest answer – he would choose to ask Sloane this: He would ask why, in a choice between living for moments like this and living for doomsday, Sloane prefers doomsday. 

"I think she's down," Sydney says. "You didn't have to do that."

"It's fine." Jack sets the last dish in the rack. "I should get home." 

"See you tomorrow?" 

"Tomorrow," Jack says, smiling. "Yes."


	57. post-finale, Syd becomes obsessed with a Rambaldi artifact

**"The Cauldron"**

 

The final report is left for Sydney to complete. Officially, this is because Sydney has some expertise in Rambaldi artifacts, however unwillingly gained. Unofficially, Sydney knows, they're worried about her. They've given her something simple to do, so that she can feel productive and still have a few months to grieve. 

She needs those months; they're right to worry. 

Sydney throws herself into the task. It's amazing how quickly the scattered bits and pieces begin to make sense to her. They exude a certain morbid fascination, and Sydney goes over the notes the same way she might trace a cut on her lip with her tongue. The pain is instructive. The shape becomes familiar. 

Most intriguing of all is a device called the Cauldron. It's a flat dish, not a real cauldron, but if certain people were to drain a few drops of their blood into it – 

Sydney does not have to ask whether she might be one of those people. 

The first time she cuts into the flesh of her wrist, she thinks of her lost sister. Then Nadia is there, slightly translucent but otherwise shockingly ordinary. 

"Nadia?" 

"It's so good to see you." Nadia's smile is weary. "You wouldn't believe how busy they keep us. After, I mean. I haven't been able to look in on you at all." 

"I miss you," Sydney whispers. She can even hold her sister's hand, though it is as soft as a silk scarf. "So much." 

"I miss you too." 

Then Nadia's gone, and Sydney's crying – not in sorrow, but in joy. Hope renews inside her; life has purpose again. 

The next night, Sydney thinks of her mother. 

Irina cocks her head. "You weren't who I expected to see." 

There is much to say between them, but this question must come first. "Mom, why?" 

"I thought it was inevitable." Irina doesn't quite look Sydney in the eye. "I was wrong. I'm sorry." 

"I wanted you to know – I still love you. I always will." 

"I know, Sydney. You're the kind who would." 

Irina's smile fades last, just like the Cheshire Cat's. 

The third night is an evening Sydney might have spent at home. Vaughn has the weekend off, and Isabelle is in high spirits. Sydney kisses them both goodbye and returns to the Rambaldi vault. She cuts into her now-scarred wrist, watches her blood trickle down into the Cauldron and thinks of her father. 

Jack appears instantly. "Sydney, what do you think you're doing?" 

"Dad." There's a lump in her throat; it's hard to talk. "I wanted to say – I love you." 

"You said that already." He's furious. "I can't believe you need to be told this, but getting involved with Rambaldi doesn't end well."

"I didn't mean – this isn't –"

"Yes, it is. Put that thing down this instant. I never want to see you acting like this again. Do you understand?"

"Yes." 

"Fine." Jack is nearly transparent as he says, almost unwillingly, "Goodbye, sweetheart." 

As soon as he's gone, Sydney dashes the Cauldron upon the floor, and it shatters into a hundred pieces. She throws the shards away and notes, in her report, that the artifact was never found.


	58. more Jack/Nadia UST

**"Ties of Blood and Water"**

At the appointed hour, Jack drives to the pier. He feels a certain edge – not of fear, nor of anticipation, but of acute curiosity. Tonight's rendezvous will be informative. 

The ocean breeze is cool enough this time of year that few people linger in the area after dark. Jack can see the lights of boats in the harbor and their wavering reflections on the black waters below. Silhouetted against all this, defiantly obvious in a scarlet wrap, is Nadia. She keeps her face toward the ocean as he walks close, long after he knows she's heard his footsteps. 

Once they're standing side by side, she says, "I've always wanted to own a boat. Not a yacht – a sailboat. Something I could learn to handle myself." 

"What would you name it?" 

" _Scheherazade_." 

Jack isn't sure all those letters would fit on the back of a small sailboat, but there's no point in getting too far off-topic. "Why did you call me here?" 

She glances over her shoulder at him, face half-obscured by her hair. "Maybe I did it to see if you would actually come." 

"If so, you have your answer." 

"I guess I do." 

When Nadia turns from the water and walks toward a small bench nearby, Jack follows and takes the seat next to her. This is almost the first time they've ever been alone together, save for tense intervals during missions, but it doesn't feel like it. Instead this feels like part of a conversation they've been having for quite a while. 

"We should talk about this," she finally says. "About whatever this is that's happening. Or could happen." 

"Talking about these things does no good. You'll take action or you won't. You'll decide for reasons that have nothing to do with anything I could say." 

Nadia cocks her head, weighing that. She is undoubtedly sifting through it for hidden meanings and clues; however, Jack means precisely what he just said. Sometimes honesty is its own kind of opacity. 

He is quite certain that she will decide not to pursue any kind of affair with him – has in fact already decided that, though she doesn't know that yet. Tonight, probably, she'll figure it out. Jack has sublimated some of his erotic curiosity about Nadia into wondering how she will come to this conclusion: how quickly, how happily, what reasons she'll cite. He may never take this girl as a lover, but he means to know her in every other sense. As Sloane's daughter, she is a danger; as Sydney's sister, she is a gift. Either way, Jack must understand who she truly is. 

She says, "If talking doesn't affect our decisions –"

"It doesn't."

"Then you must have already decided." Nadia smiles at him wickedly. "Tell me, Jack, what did you choose?" 

Jack hadn't planned on this particular question. "This isn't a call I can make for you." 

"If there's any possibility – then your answer is yes." 

She has trapped him so cleverly that he doesn't mind it.


	59. Weiss and Vaughn go undercover as mobsters

**"Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang"**

 

"This is a serious assignment." 

"I never said it wasn't." 

"We're infiltrating the Mafia, Eric. The mob. People who kill people." 

"And this is different from our usual workday how?" 

"Well, that's kind of what I'm talking about, actually. On our usual workday, we're dealing with dangerous people in Saudi Arabia or Thailand or wherever, and then you're completely on the ball. Today, you keep admiring your reflection in the rear-view mirror and coming up with wacky nicknames for us." 

"Aw, c'mon. I think Mickey 'the Bulldog' Vaughn works for you." 

"First of all, my middle name is not and never will be 'the Bulldog' or any other animal. Second, please don't call me Mickey. And third, do you remember the part where these are people who kill people?" 

"Mike, chill. I'm just getting into character." 

"You're way too into this." 

"Which is exactly the point. The thing is, these guys – these Jersey guys who control an airport and a couple of docks and think that makes them kings of the world – they're way too into this. They make up these jackass nicknames for themselves. They enjoy using too much hair gel. They actually pick out these godawful suits to wear. For them, it's fun. From the shiny shirts down to murdering innocent people, it's fun. We're not going to get psyched about murdering innocent people, so if we're going to live our roles, we kinda have to enjoy the personas. Do you see what I'm saying." 

"… I can't believe that actually made sense." 

"THANK you." 

"I still don't want my middle name to be an animal."

"How about Mickey 'the Bruiser' Vaughn?" 

"How about we use something less like my real name?" 

"Oh, so, you actually like the Bruiser part. Admit it." 

"Shut up." 

"You're smiling." 

"I'm smiling because you're wearing a polyester shirt the color of a yield sign and enough hair gel for ten normal men. Also, seriously, that is a whole lot of Brut Faberge action you have going on." 

"That's why you've kept the window cracked open the whole trip, isn't it?" 

"Pretty much. So, what do you think of being called Ricky 'the Buffalo' Weiss?" 

"Buffalo? Sure, what the hell. I like buffalo. They're sort of bad-ass, I guess. Hey, I think we're coming up to our exit on the Turnpike." 

"Okay. You ready for this?" 

"I spent last night marathoning 'The Sopranos' on DVD. I should be ready for anything." 

"You ignored the briefing reports in favor of watching a TV show?"

"Plus the whole Godfather trilogy. And 'Goodfellas.' Can't forget that one." 

"We're going to end up wearing cement shoes in the East River, aren't we?"

"Not if you relax into the role, Vaughn. Just think – we're gonna drink some beers, hang out at the dock and maybe have a little cannoli. Who doesn't like cannoli?" 

"Cannoli – sounds really good, actually." 

"Like I said, the best way to do this job is to enjoy it. So, you with me? Badda-bing?"

"Badda-bang."


	60. Three Scars

Sydney has a scar on her abdomen, low and to the right, perhaps three inches long. For months she wondered how it got there – whether her lost two years included a stabbing or a car accident. Her nightmares supplied possible explanations, each more grotesque than the last, but none of them were worse than the truth. 

_I can still have children,_ she thinks as she slides her hand down over the scar, fingers dipping beneath her pajama bottoms. The raised keloid remains slightly tender to the touch. _The doctor told me my chances were cut in half, but I still have plenty of chances._

But Sydney never says these words out loud for fear of disturbing Vaughn. He sleeps next to her, brow furrowed even during his dreams. Even during lovemaking, Vaughn never touches the scar. She wonders if he's curious about the possibility of children; he's never asked. 

**

Weiss has a scar on his throat, several scars if you want to be specific: a crosshatch of faint red lines that look more like a crossword puzzle than the entry wound of a rifle bullet. 

It's not so pretty, but the plastic surgeons have toned it down a lot over the years. All on the CIA bankroll, too – you can't have your agents wandering around with too many identifying marks. So Weiss can take Nadia out to dinner or for a night of bowling without worrying too much about whether she'll notice the scar.

Sooner or later – Weiss hopes it's going to be sooner – they'll go to bed, and eventually, yeah, she'll see it. Nadia will ask, _How did you get that?_

The honest answer is, _Your mother shot me._ So Weiss is planning on giving a dishonest answer. Right now, the anecdote involves a fire in a restaurant in Seville, and it's really funny up until the part where he gets hurt. A few more details, and Weiss thinks he'll be able to tell the story so well Nadia will never guess it's a lie. 

**

Nadia has a scar in the bend of her elbow, a white half-moon that has faded considerably but will probably never disappear. She hopes it never goes away; it's worth remembering. 

She was 15 years old, a runaway from juvenile detention, already on her second lover. He was 21, which seemed mature and worldly. During their two-month affair, she slept in his room above the garage; he took her on the mattress that lay on his concrete floor. They drank tequila from the bottle. Sometimes at night, after he was done with her, she'd lie there and wonder if this was all she was meant to be. Usually, the answer was yes.

Then, one day, he got mad and burned her with his cigarette. She was supposed to cry. Instead, she jumped up and hit him so hard in the face that his jaw broke in four places. The cops came, and she was dragged back into juvenile detention, but it was worth it.


	61. Haladki's thoughts on betrayal

The way Haladki saw it, he never betrayed anyone. You couldn't betray someone or something you'd never been loyal to in the first place, right?

He'd never been loyal to Jack Bristow, an insufferably arrogant son of a bitch if ever there was one. Talking to that guy was like trying to talk to a pillar of granite. Jack never listened to Haladki's suggestions, never thought them through in meetings, just shot them down like the goddamned _Hindenburg._

(Okay, sure, technically, the _Hindenburg_ didn't get shot down, but the whole part about crashing in flames, that bit was accurate.) 

He'd never been loyal to Sydney Bristow, either. Sure, the girl was hot, and she seemed to get the job done – but given the amount of assistance she had from her father and a certain love-struck handler, of course she got the job done. A trained monkey could probably be a double agent if it had that much help. All Haladki knew about Sydney was that she somehow made everybody else forget that rules were supposed to apply. 

And he had damn sure never been loyal to Michael Vaughn. They'd been in the same training class; all the girls went apeshit for Mike, with pretty-boy face and sob story about his dad. Even when Mike did something as stupid as forgetting his manual, he got a cutesy call sign: "Boy Scout." 

Haladki's call sign was "Weasel," which was just a joke, ha ha, very funny, and it got old a few years ago. Just like working with Michael Vaughn, or taking orders from Jack Bristow, or doing overtime to cover Sydney Bristow's ass. 

At a certain point, Haladki felt, you had to recognize that your first loyalty is always to yourself. 

"I tend to agree with you," said Mr. Sark, as they sat together in a car parked in an underground garage. "Wasn't it Polonius who said that if we are true to ourselves, then we cannot be false to anyone else?" 

"'Hamlet.' Yeah." Haladki wondered why Mr. Sark was smirking at him like that. The guy did a lot of smirking. On the other hand, he did a lot of untraceable cash transfers; Haladki could put up with the occasional smirking for $50,000. "So why do you want the Bristows exposed? If you just want them dead –"

"They're not to be harmed. My employer insisted upon that, and my employer's insistence can be quite pointed." Sark held up his gun – not as a threat, not exactly, but Haladki got the picture. "Their status as double agents should slowly become more and more difficult to hide. Preferably, the Bristows will recognize this themselves long before Arvin Sloane does, but we recognize that this much is beyond your control." 

"I can swing it. Trust me."

Mr. Sark sighed. 

A few more phone calls, a little more pressure on Will Tippin – and the deal would be done. The briefcase of cash was heavy in Haladki's hand, and loyalty never felt so good.


	62. How They Travel

They all travel well; they wouldn't last long if they didn't. Compared to all the other highly technical, esoteric skills they've acquired, the capacity to travel easily may seem mundane, but it's important to keeping your focus, maintaining your cool. 

But they all travel well in different ways. 

Sydney packs a book to read during the few spare moments she'll have to call her own. During her grad-school days, she usually took assignments with her; now, she finds she prefers to take children's books. Not storybooks, but the tales she loved when she was 10 or 12 years old: _I Capture the Castle. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. A Little Princess. The Trumpet of the Swan._

She never took _Alice in Wonderland_ with her – not the first edition given to her by her mother, nor the third edition Weiss gave her to replace it. Both were too precious to risk losing. 

Dixon carries an eye mask. Black satin. Yes, the masks ARE made for women, and you can tease him about this at your peril. He discovered their remarkable ability to combat jet lag and provide deep sleep many years ago, when a bout of insomnia nearly ruined one of his rare getaways with Diane. She slipped the satin mask off her face and onto his as a joke, but since then, he's sworn by them. Diane thought it was endearing; she always made sure to buy them in sets. 

Now they remind him of her. It's more pleasant than sad, at least, most nights. 

Vaughn believes that, no matter how tired you are, or how banged-up you might be, the first thing you should do when you wake up in a foreign country is exercise. Not just a couple of sit-ups, either; a solid thirty minutes of solid, heart-pounding workout is the minimum. He feels like it wakes him up, resets his internal clock to accept this as the beginning of the day. 

Sometimes, Sydney gets up and runs with him. But no matter how hard Vaughn tries, most mornings, she's up before he opens his eyes. 

Nadia meditates. She feels a bit uneasy about it – for most people, this is a religious practice, and she holds no strong faith – but it centers her as almost nothing else does. It's best if she can do this just before going to sleep; Nadia can concentrate best in the dark. 

No matter how small her travel kit may be for an op, Nadia always packs a tiny candle in a tin. Most of her equipment packs include something to light it with. Often she wishes that she could indulge in some of the lovely scented ones – pear or lavender – but unscented is safest. 

Jack carries a small brass case that looks like a pocketwatch. Inside it is a picture of Sydney, aged 13, gangly and awkward and, to his eyes, beautiful. She has never dreamed that he carries such a thing, and he has never dreamed of telling her.


	63. The Cradle (another Rambaldi device, gone wrong)

Jack had never understood Arvin’s fascination with Rambaldi artifacts – for many reasons, but among them was the fact that nobody ever seemed to understand precisely what one of the devices did until it was activated. What if the machine in question did something you didn’t want it to do? 

Such as this. 

“Daddy?” Sydney smiled up at him from the end of the conference table. Her little hands drummed against the brushed metal surface. “May I have a sandwich?” 

“Of course, sweetheart.” Jack could smile back at her. His daughter was, by far, the least troubling of … those affected. 

“What about me?” said Vaughn. He had magic marker stains all over his cheeks and fingers; no doubt the briefing room walls had been defaced again. “I want a sandwich too!” 

“Me too!” Weiss called from his place on the floor, where he was busily using highlighters to color in the margins of a report on black market activity in Malaysia. “Peanut butter and jelly for me.” 

Nadia, who sat in the chair next to Jack, watching him with wide, black unwavering eyes, whispered, “I just want an apple.” 

Jack studied the faces of the APO agents around him – all of whom had been competent, professional adults (in Vaughn’s case, more or less) until the latest Rambaldi device was activated. Now, they were four year olds: physically and mentally. Although they seemed to remember one another, the memories were vague, and not nearly as immediate as their desires for Legos, Hostess cupcakes and someone to help them remove their clothes when they went potty. 

He had designated an outside agent for this last task, as he would have to look these people in the face again as adults someday. He hoped. 

“Sydney, why don’t you tell Agent Takahara to make you all some sandwiches?” Jack said, as he opened his briefcase, took out his own apple for lunchtime and gave it to a beaming Nadia instead. “I’ll be back in just a minute.” 

His daughter nodded as she skipped off toward the long-suffering Agent Takahara. Satisfied that the general chaos was controlled … at least for the moment … Jack headed down the hallway toward the chamber that contained this latest, greatest nuisance of Milo Rambaldi’s making: The Cradle. 

As he walked down the corridor, however, he heard a voice shout, “Uhoh!” 

Jack, reflexes honed after three days of this, ducked just in time to avoid being struck by a bizarre projectile made of crumpled paper, file folders and strategically placed staples. He looked into Marshall’s lab to see a newly constructed catapult with many rubber bands … and, sitting behind it silently and sheepishly, the four-year-old versions of Marcus Dixon and Marshall Flinkman. 

“I’m sorry,” Marshall said, so sincerely that it was startling when he grinned. “But it was _cool_!” 

“Really cool!” Dixon agreed, rocking back and forth as he took his tiny feet in his hands. 

Jack sighed. “Be careful.” 

Without further incident, he reached the room where the Rambaldi artifact was kept. Jack wasn’t surprised to see that he wasn’t alone. 

“It’s shiny,” said Arvin. He sat on the floor, staring up at the brass-and-amber contraption on its pedestal. How strange it was, to see this small, guileless child and yet recognize Sloane in both body and soul. Perhaps it was the eager glow in his eyes. 

“Yes,” Jack said. “It is. What do you think of it?” 

“I think it must be magic.” Arvin’s voice was very sure, but a note of doubt crept in as he said, “Do you think it’s magic too?” 

Head aching, Jack said, “I think I’m very glad I wasn’t around when it was turned on.”


	64. Chronicles of a Normal Girl

Sydney begins shedding her spy self as soon as her plane begins its descent into LAX. She adjusts her clothes, gets a little more comfortable. When they land, she only turns on her personal phone and checks her voicemail there: questions from Francie about what to wear on her next big date with Charlie, or sheepish invitations from Will, and always, always, a loving welcome from Danny.

By the time she’s in the taxi, she’s no longer Bluebird; she’s Syd. Her returning-home ritual has a new addition: The return of her engagement ring to her finger. Sydney knows she’s got to tell Sloane about it sooner or later – better sooner – but for now, her engagement to Danny is her own sweet secret. SD-6 demands so much information from her, demands that she keep so many secrets from other people; it feels good to reverse directions there, just for a while. 

She’ll tell. She’ll make Sloane see that nothing has to change – that she can be a wife and a spy. It’s just a question of compartmentalization. A matter of letting her spy self handle her job, and letting the normal girl out the rest of the time. 

Syd comes into her house, and unpacks swiftly, pausing only to rinse a bloodstain out of one blouse before she sends it out to the dry cleaner. They’ve never asked awkward questions, but she never wants them to start. 

It’s curiously quiet at Danny’s house. Though his schedule at the hospital is unpredictable, if he can’t welcome her home he usually makes a point of phoning when she’s due in. Francie, Amy and Will also often call. Just as she’s starting to wonder if something’s up, the cordless finally rings. 

“Syd! It’s Francie.” 

“I know who it is, duh.” Sydney tosses the rest of her clothes (still slightly possessed of the faint but undeniably different smell that comes of spending a lot of time in rural Latin America) into the washer. “What’s going on?” 

“Charlie asked his parents to dinner tonight and forgot to tell me.” 

“Oh, my God. Can you go to a restaurant?”

“He promised them one of my ‘gourmet meals.’ So I’m trying to whip up some gazpacho and – oh, damn.” From the sound of it, Francie is swearing at her food processor, again. “Listen, I’m totally fried, and I’m not going to be able to make conversation tonight, particularly not if they start up with the grandchildren thing again. So I’m just turning it into a dinner party. Small, because I can only cook so much in an insane hurry, but it’s not actually more trouble to cook for eight than for four. Please say you and Danny can come!” 

At that moment, the front door opens; Sydney looks over her shoulder with a broad smile to see Danny (her fiancé, this man is going to be her husband) coming in. “Hang on.” Covering the receiver with one hand, she says, “Hey, sweetheart. Francie wants us for dinner tonight. Are you up for it?” 

She expects he’ll say no, after a long shift at the hospital; in fact, she’s hoping he will, because she didn’t get as much sleep as usual on her flight back. Instead, Danny grins. “Sounds great.” 

Well, it’ll be good to see Francie and Charlie. Probably awkward to see Will, but the sooner they all get past that, the better. “We’re in! What time?” 

After all the plans are made, she goes back into the bedroom, where Danny is stripping off his scrubs. He says, “So what’s on the menu?” 

“Gazpacho and – I don’t know what else. She didn’t say.” Sydney gives him a little look, and he chuckles. 

“Was I supposed to say no?”

“No, it’s just – I’m tired, and you’re tired.” 

“We shouldn’t go to be too early. Throws the schedule right off.” 

“I know. I just meant – ” She winds her arms around his now-bare neck. “—by the time we get in, we’ll be too tired to make love. And I missed you.” 

“My darling girl.” He starts unfastening her belt. “Have you never heard the song ‘Afternoon Delight’?” 

And Danny sings it to her, every word, as they get undressed and laugh through their mutual shower and fall into bed together. She silences him only with her kisses. The late sunlight paints their bedroom golden, and once again Sydney marvels at just how good her normal-girl self has it. 

They get ready and make it to Francie’s more or less on time. 

“Ten minutes late,” Sydney mutters as they go up the walk, her fiddling with one earring as her pashmina flutters in the breeze, Danny with a gift-bagged bottle of wine in one hand. “That’s not late late, is it?” She measures so many of her deadlines in seconds; her entire concept of “normal late” is sometimes thrown off. 

“Not usually, especially as dinner’s being served later,” Danny says. “With Charlie’s parents in attendance? Francie may well already be desperate. But I’m betting not.” 

There’s something funny about his smile as he says it. Sydney gives him a look. “What’s going on?” 

Just then Francie opens the front door, and everybody she has _ever met_ shouts, “Surprise!” 

“Whoa, whoa, what?” Sydney stumbles back, laughing, to lean on Danny’s arm. “It’s not my birthday! Or his! 

“But it is your surprise couples’ wedding shower!” Francie says as people start to applaud. “Will you get in here? Nobody’s been able to talk for ten minutes!” 

Sydney bounds forward to hug Francie, but she glances back at Danny. “You knew.” 

It’s Charlie who explains: “We had to tell one of you. The way your schedules go, there was no chance we could surprise you both and get you both here at the same time.” 

Danny shrugs, clearly proud of himself. “Guilty as charged.” 

After that, Sydney’s caught up in the frivolity of the evening: a delicious dinner (which actually does involve gazpacho, though not Charlie’s parents), tons of her favorite people, and the sort of clunky-adorable gifts people get at a couples’ shower, like cheese plates and ice buckets. Charlie has put together a romantic-jazz mix for everyone to listen to. Will has either come a long way toward getting over his disappointment or is doing an extra-good job of pretending; either way, that’s a relief. Jet lag seems really far away. SD-6, even farther. 

_I can do this,_ Sydney reminds herself, looking around at her friends and the man she loves. _Balance everything I need to balance, create the life I need to have. And I don’t have to do it alone._


	65. Heart and Soul - Jack and Sydney's final moments alone

It was the next to last time Sydney would ever be alone with her father, though of course neither of them realized it then. 

She was heading home from APO, eager to get back to Vaughn and Isabelle – to her family. But it occurred to her that Vaughn, who had gone home not even half an hour before her, might want a little more time alone with the daughter he’d only met a few days before. Bonding time mattered. Fathers and daughters needed it. 

So she phoned her own father. “Dad?” 

“Is everything all right?” 

“Yeah. Everything’s fine. I was just – I thought I might swing by your place on the way home.” Silence. “Would that be okay?” 

“That’s fine.” He hung up without saying goodbye. Sydney felt slightly rebuffed, but had finally learned not to trust that emotion when it came to Jack Bristow. Getting close to him meant clearing a few hurdles. 

When she walked off his elevator, one of the neighbors smiled at her and waved; Sydney waved back, wondering if Dad had been able to resist bragging about his granddaughter. Probably not. She would have to be sure to bring Isabelle by here some weekend when he could show her off. Sure, he’d do it by giving them all false names as cover, but the pride would be real. Amused, she pushed his doorbell and was startled when he opened instantly. 

“Come inside,” Jack said. As soon as she had stepped over the threshold, he continued, “Are we secure?” 

“Yes. Dad – I just came to visit. No other reason.” 

He looked nonplussed by this. Sydney was sort of embarrassed that this could be true; she and her father had grown much closer during her pregnancy, and he now spent considerable amounts of time at her house visiting with Isabelle. And yet she had almost never come to his apartment. Well, she thought, no time like the present to start.

“Where’s the cat?” she said, pointing toward the little dish still in the corner. 

“Oh. She – comes and goes.” 

“You should take her to the vet.” Sydney dropped her purse in a nearby chair, trying to be casual. Her father would respond best if neither of them acknowledged any awkwardness. “So you know she’s healthy. That way, if the cat’s here when I bring Isabelle, we can let her play with the kitty. Or chase the kitty. For the first couple years, it’s probably the same thing, right?” 

“Right.” The small, elusive smile she’d learn to look for from her father made its appearance. “I’ll see to that. Immediately.” 

Encouraged, Sydney looked around the apartment in hopes of something else cheerful to talk about; to her surprise, she found it. “Hey. Looks like you’ve been playing the piano.” 

“Occasionally. Yes.” Jack put one hand on the piano, then removed it, as if unsure whether he should further acknowledge his presence in the room. 

Sydney sat on the bench and cautiously hit one of the black keys. As the note echoed, she said, “I remember, you know. You watching me practice piano. Playing with me, sometimes.” 

“You were very small,” he said, in a tone meant to suggest doubt. 

“Watch me.” To demonstrate, she began picking out “Heart and Soul” – the most obvious tune, and almost ridiculously kitschy, but it was one her dad had taught her. Sydney picked her way through it, self-conscious, but when she looked up again, she was glad she’d done it; her father looked both very happy and very embarrassed to be happy. 

“All right. You do remember.” He put one hand on her shoulder, just for a moment. 

This was the obvious time for her to change the subject, which was why she didn’t. Sydney had already figured out that if she wanted to be a good mother, she needed to start by being a different kind of daughter. In a small voice, she said, “I do remember the good parts. I … chose not to, for a while.” 

“There weren’t nearly enough of them.” 

“But there were some. Like – like how you made my turkey costume. Or that time we went to the planetarium and the guy behind us had the hiccups and we started laughing. Or the time you – oh, God, you chaperoned my junior prom. Talk about overkill. That had to be the best-guarded prom ever.” 

Was her father _laughing_? Not quite – but that was the biggest smile Sydney had seen from him since Isabelle’s birth. 

She said, “We can make more good memories now.” 

Jack hesitated before answering, “For Isabelle.” 

Still he couldn’t admit that he needed this, wanted it, for himself. But that was all right, Sydney thought. That would come in time. 

They didn’t get the time; Jack died within the month. Sydney sometimes hated the fact that they hadn’t fully healed the breach between them. But most of the time, she knew – she had proved to him that she would always remember the good parts, from now on.


	66. Today Of All Days - Jack fills out Isabelle's birth certificate

A nurse or orderly, some person in scrubs, holds out a clipboard thick with paperwork and gives him an obsequious grin. “You’re the grandfather?” 

It takes Jack a minute to realize that as of today, he is. “Yes.” 

“Just some basic forms to fill out while your daughter and granddaughter are being checked. If you wouldn’t mind.” 

This is usually Jack’s cue to explain what he would mind, but today is an exception to every rule. Not only does he nod and accept the clipboard, but he also smiles just a little. 

In large block capitals, he dutifully fills in Sydney’s name, birth date, birthplace – and then does the same for Isabelle. Birthdate: today. Of course, in his granddaughter’s case, the birthplace is a lie; as far as official paperwork will ever know, Isabelle was born in the back seat of a car off the side of Highway 99 after a labor too short to get her mother to a hospital. Jack and Sydney worked the details of the story out before Isabelle was half an hour old and drilled it into the CIA-approved medics who got them out of the bank. Ill-timed visit to distant relatives, sudden labor, a trip to the hospital cut short, and grandfather stepping in to deliver the baby. 

The reality was so different. The reality included Irina. 

Jack has hardly thought about Irina from Isabelle’s birth until this moment. Normally his wife has an unparalleled ability to occlude his reasoning, but apparently his granddaughter has a clarifying effect that allows him to maintain balance. He wasn’t, and isn’t, concerned about where Irina has gone. He doesn’t even care much that she played them again – he had expected little better. Almost all his remaining illusions about Irina died when he sent her messages about Sydney’s pregnancy and received no reply; had there been much truth to her avowals of love, surely she would have answered. 

Briefly they returned, when he saw that Irina had given up her own sure escape to remain with Sydney during her labor. But they died again when she left before even learning her grandchild’s name. 

For a moment, that realization is bitter in his mouth. But only a moment. Today is more about beginnings than endings. 

He hesitates briefly over LAST NAME on Isabelle’s form – this was a point he and Sydney didn’t discuss. Eventually it will be Vaughn, of course, but would she have this name from birth, as a tribute to a dead father? Or would Sydney be more likely to name her Bristow as a pragmatic matter, to simplify school records and doctor visits for the future she’s supposedly looking at spending alone? 

Bristow, he decides. If he’s wrong, Sydney can change it sooner rather than later. 

When he finishes the paperwork, he hands it over and expects to sit back in the blue vinyl waiting room chairs for another few hours. Instead, he’s told that while Sydney is still with her doctor, Isabelle has already been placed in the nursery – would he like to see her? 

So Jack walks down the corridor to a broad glass wall, behind which are at least a dozen newborn infants, all of which have the comically squashed appearance of that first day. And yet he knows Isabelle immediately. In his half-transparent reflection, Jack can see a smile on his face. He looks … unguarded. And yet somehow that doesn’t bother him, not today.


	67. Slusho -- Syd & Vaughn run into each other accidentally during early season one

“We’re out of milk,” Francie announces. “Also eggs. And while there may be sugar in the canister, it’s not enough to sweeten coffee, much less bake a cake.” 

Sydney groans. “Why didn’t you check earlier?” 

“Um, you could have checked too.” 

“I’m not the cook! I’m not the one making a birthday cake for Amy tomorrow.” 

“No, you’re the one running out to get milk, eggs and sugar. And oh, hey, get some Cheetohs if they have them. I’m totally jonesing for Cheetohs.” 

“Why do I have to be the one to go?” 

“God, you’re whiny tonight. What gives, Syd?” 

“I had a tough day at work.” 

“And I didn’t? Trust me, working the Kleinman bat mitzvah was not a job for the weak.” 

Although Sydney is willing to concede the horrors of any social event designed for 13-year-olds, she privately suspects it has nothing on breaking into a drug den in Guadalajara, stealing security codes to some vault in Costa Rica she’ll have to break into later this week, and then flying back commercial, in coach no less, where the airplane dinner was something called “chicken surprise.” But she can’t really explain that to Francie, and Francie did run out and buy her new tights when she was running late for work the other day, so Sydney picks up the car keys. “Regular Cheetohs or puffs?” 

“Regular. Why mess with perfection, right?” 

So Sydney heads to the night market closest to her house. She’s wearing a blue jean jacket over the T-shirt she intends to sleep in and faded yoga pants. No makeup. Hair yanked back in a ponytail that feels distinctly off center, but what does it matter? 

Until she walks in and sees Michael Vaughn at the Slusho stand. 

Damn, damn, damn. She didn’t even get the Joey’s Pizza call this time – maybe he just missed her, or maybe they have a tail on her. Either way, she’s about to get called into action by her handler on a night when she thought she would actually get to relax. The cuteness of the handler is, of course, inversely proportional to the amount of time she spent pulling herself together before she left the house. 

She comes to stand beside him, and he gives her a double-take, which in Sydney’s opinion is kind of rude. No, she doesn’t look her best, but there’s no need to be weird about it. “No eye contact.” 

“That’s actually my rule,” Vaughn replies. 

“So follow it.” 

“Caution at all times.” 

“Right.” She busies herself inspecting the snack offerings as though she didn’t know she was going straight for the Cheetohs. “So.” 

“So.” 

“What is it?” 

Vaughn hesitates, cold blue Slusho in hand. “You didn’t follow me here?”

“No. This isn’t a meet?”

“Uh, no.”

“Wait – you came all the way out here just because you wanted a Slusho?” 

“I think they put too much sugar in the syrup here,” he says sheepishly. “These are the best. Like, in the tri-state area.” 

Sydney wonders if he’s blushing; she can’t entirely stifle her laughter. The very fact that they’re anywhere near each other when they don’t have to be is technically dangerous for them both, but surely not even Arvin Sloane’s best henchmen would tail her on a late-night cake-ingredients run. “Let’s chalk this up to accident.” 

“And addictive Slushos. What, no Cheetoh puffs?” 

“Francie likes the regular kind.” 

“No accounting for taste.” Vaughn heads for the checkout counter without another word. She goes toward the cooler where they keep the six-pack cartons of eggs. Anybody else in the store would think they’d never met, even when she cocks her head slightly as the door chimes, signaling his departure. 

Vaughn almost certainly didn’t come here just for a Slusho; based on a few things he’s said, she’s positive he lives in a different part of L.A. altogether. But she knows he’s too careful to come all the way out here on the off chance of running into her. He cares about her safety too much for that. 

This leaves two possible explanations for his trip to this night market: (1) He came here because it reminds him of her, or (2) this market is also near Alice’s house. As in, his actual girlfriend’s place. Where he would probably be sleeping tonight, since he’s shopping in this neighborhood at 11 p.m.

Sydney knows which possibility she should hope for. She also knows which possibility she’s actually hoping for. 

**

“Whoa.” Francie stares at her. “I didn’t know Cheetohs came in bags that big. That’s bigger than the pillows on my bed.” 

“We both had bad days at work.” Sydney tries hard not to think of Vaughn, either with Alice or – no, best just not to think of him at all. “One junk food coma for two, coming up.”


	68. History -- Jack's anger at Irina

He hates Irina for so many things. 

_“She’s sound asleep,” Laura said, leaning over Sydney’s crib. Jack watched from the doorway in deep appreciation of every aspect of the scene: his infant daughter’s safety, not to mention her long-awaited silence. The sheer pleasure of being home again after so long away. And the beauty of his wife, his beloved Laura, standing there in a long white nightgown made almost sheer by the hallway light coming through the open door._

Thinking back, he hates her for standing over Sydney, for being a threat to his child on levels he couldn’t yet imagine. He hates her for the entire theatrical set she built and he unknowingly called home for all those years. And he hates her for making him want her. 

_They ate dinner. Or they tried to eat dinner. Laura had made a big spread, several of his favorites, but he couldn’t think about anything but her. They made love while dinner went cold on the table. He said he wanted to kiss every part of her body, and she made sure he obliged, laughing hardest when he pulled her legs up onto his shoulders and lovingly kissed her feet._

He hates her for making him kiss her feet. Because he’s pretty sure she wasn’t laughing because she was ticklish. She was laughing because this was just more evidence that she had him exactly where she wanted him. Jack wouldn’t deny it, but he hates her for taking pleasure in it. 

_Afterward, she traced the new scar on his shoulder. “What happened?” she whispered. “I know you can’t tell me everything, but at least tell me who did this to you.” And as hard as Jack tried to be, as used to the espionage life as he was, there was no such thing as not being scared when somebody dug a knife into you. It felt good to be able to tell someone in the world that he’d been scared. Laura held him tightly, asking soft questions only when he paused. Not all the questions were about his feelings – some were about the mission – but he thought she was just trying to distract him from his pain, the way any loving wife might._

He hates her for using his vulnerabilities to wheedle the truth out of him. But more than that, he hates that she made him admit he was scared. 

_After he confessed everything, she held him for a very long time. Then she pressed her lips to his scar and whispered, “I could kill the man who did this to you.” He smiled into her hair at the absurdity of his gentle Laura killing anyone._

He hates her because he still doesn’t know why she said that. Why would she say something that worked against her cover? Why would she say something so little like Laura, so much like Irina? 

Above all, Jack hates Irina for making him love her, with the kind of love that doesn’t die.


	69. The First Church of Mammals - Eric is asked to perform another wedding ceremony

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I mean, I’ve been seriously reconsidering my minister…hood. Ministerbeing. Whatever it is, I feel weird about it.” 

“Weiss, come on. You became a minister of the, what was it –“

“The First Church of Mammals.” 

“Seriously?”

“You were there, Vaughn! How could you forget something like the First Church of Mammals?”

“I wasn’t exactly there. I was listening in on comms waiting for Marshall to finish getting married and resume saving my ass.” 

“Even life-threatening danger is no excuse. Let’s face it: Around here, that’s just another Wednesday.” 

“What does that mean, even, the First Church of Mammals? Is there a Second Church of Mammals?” 

“Maybe. I think there was some kind of dogmatic schism. What I don’t get is the Mammals part. As far as I know, there are no churches of reptiles or amphibians.” 

“You could start one.” 

“You’re hilarious, Vaughn. Think about this for a second, okay? Being a minister of a church – that ought to mean something. I am, like, the world’s worst Jew, and even I feel some twinge of my religious conscience about that.” 

“Come on. You’re not the world’s worst Jew.” 

“Remember how I always get bacon on my burger?”

“I still don’t think that’s the worst in the whole world.” 

“But do you get my point?” 

“I guess so. I mean, yeah, being a minister is normally a pretty serious thing. Meaningful. But this is the First Church of Mammals. As far as you know, it doesn’t even exist outside of the internet. So it’s not like you’re failing to live up to some creed or whatever.” 

“Which makes the being-a-minister thing kind of meaningless, right? So how can I get up there and keep a straight face? Much less have any power vested in me by the state of California?” 

“So, you don’t feel like a real minister.”

“Thank you. That is exactly what I was trying to say.” 

“According to that logic, then you don’t feel like Marshall and Carrie are really married.” 

“Whoa. Vaughn, that is not what I said.” 

“That’s what you’re getting at, though. Either you have the power to perform marriages or you don’t. Which is it?” 

“Marshall and Carrie are for sure married. It took, okay?” 

“So, if you can marry Marshall and Carrie, you can marry Sydney and me.” 

“Technically. Legally. Sure. But wouldn’t you feel more – _official_ if you got a real minister? A justice of the peace?” 

“Forget official. What matters about this is making Sydney happy. You know how tough the last year has been for her.” 

“Yeah. It’s good to see her finally smiling again.” 

“For the longest time, Isabelle was the only person who could bring her out of that. Now Sydney’s getting her feet under her again, and she wants this wedding to be joyful, you know? Personal. Too many people who ought to be at the ceremony can’t be there. But if you’re the one reading the vows, it helps a little. It would make Syd really happy.” 

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” 

“Is that a yes?” 

“Never question a high priest of the First Church of Mammals.”


	70. Proposing the Idea -- Will thinks his romance with Francie is going well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 9/09

Alison doesn’t want to like the weight of Will Tippin’s head in her lap, or the softness of his wheaty hair between her fingers. She has already become accustomed to his laugh, and begun to anticipate his phone calls. She knows the warmth of his touch and the taste of his kiss. He is too close. 

“For me, the whole point of The Philadelphia Story is this scene by the pool,” Will says from his place in her lap. His cheek is nestled against the legs of her blue jeans. “The rest of it, I don’t quite connect with – but this whole thing, when they’re in the bathrobes -- it’s so sexy.”

“You just like the idea of the journalist getting the girl,” Alison says. 

“This former journalist has already got his girl.” Will tugs her hand to his face and kisses her palm. A warm sensation curls inside her, and she begins thinking of tonight, later, when they’ll be in her bed. 

Nobody ever said she couldn’t take pleasure in her work. So why does this make her feel so guilty, so bad inside? Julian wouldn’t begrudge her a bit of fun. God knows he’d enjoy himself in a similar situation. 

“I don’t think I can stay awake until the end of this movie,” she says, affecting a stretch. “What happens?” 

“There’s a big wedding, of course.” 

“But who does she marry?” 

“See, now you have to stay awake.” 

Alison laughs despite herself. “Okay, okay, you got me.” 

“That’s right, Francie.” Will props himself up and kisses her soundly on the cheek. “I gotcha.” 

She kisses him back, more slowly. Perhaps they won’t make it to the end of the film after all. 

When their lips part, he whispers, “Maybe we know who we’re gonna marry, huh?” 

Shock freezes her in place and blots out every thought. The worst part is that she wants to be happy about that. 

Will leans back, slightly bashful. “Too much, too soon?” 

“You just – caught me by surprise, that’s all.” 

“I wasn’t proposing,” he says hurriedly. “Maybe I was, uh, proposing the idea of proposing.” 

“We’ve only been together for two months.” 

“Two months of dating. Seven years of hanging out before that. It’s not like we don’t know each other. I mean, I feel like we’re going to be a part of each other’s lives forever, no matter what. So maybe we should ask ourselves exactly how that’s going to happen.”

Alison nods, a simple gesture to stall for time while she thinks. What would Francie do in a situation like this? The dossiers she studied were thorough, but not this thorough. The in-house recording began after the breakup of Francie’s past relationship, and Alison only has the bare facts of what happened there. Maybe a simple reference would do. “It’s just – after Charlie –“ 

Vagueness works. Will’s face softens, and he brushes his fingers across her cheek. “Hey. I know. You got burned pretty bad.” 

“Yeah, I did. It’s not that I don’t think you’re amazing or wonderful, because I do.” Alison hopes desperately that she’s lying. “I just don’t know if I’m ready to think about marriage yet.” 

“That’s fair.” He rests his forehead against hers. Will has the gentlest smile. “For now, how about – when you’re ready to think about it, I’ll still be here. Okay?” 

“Okay.” 

They kiss again, so sweetly she wants to cry. Finally Alison understands why she feels so guilty, and it doesn’t have a damned thing to do with Julian. 

Will settles back on the couch, his arm around her shoulders. “Back to the movie,” he says, and there’s nothing for Alison to do but watch and see how it all turns out.


End file.
